GITA n.1
Milano, October 3-6, 2025
With guest curatos:
Neringa Bumblienė (Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art),
Catherine Nichols (Biennale de Lyon)
A new initiative promoting Italian art on the international stage is launching in Milan.
GITA, an acronym for Gathering of Italian Talented Artists and a play on the Italian word for “excursion,” is conceived by artistic director Paola Clerico with curators Francesco Urbano Ragazzi and Ilaria Gianni. Aiming to increase the international representation of artists from or based in Italy, the committee invites curators of biennials and other major recurring exhibitions to explore the Italian art scene.
Moving across different cities, GITA’s program of studio visits is structured around the research interests of its guest curators, encouraging meaningful exchanges and collaborations with artists.
The program is made possible thanks to Pamina Foundation, Callie’s, and other private donors.
The first stop on this journey will be Milan, which will host the curators of two significant upcoming biennials: Catherine Nichols for the Lyon Biennale and Neringa Bumblienė for the Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art. Over the course of several days filled with encounters and itineraries through the city, the curators will have the opportunity to engage with the work of around fifteen artists and establish new connections with them. Among the artists will be: Atelier dell’Errore, Carola Bonfili, Luca De Leva, Tomaso De Luca, Michela De Mattei, Alessandro Di Pietro, Anna Franceschini, Gaia Fugazza, Nicola Genovese, Invernomuto, Franco Mazzucchelli, Raffaela Naldi Rossano, Natália Trejbalová, and Giulio Scalisi. The latter designed GITA’s visual identity, creating an engaging animated lettering freely inspired by the iconic mascot of the 1990 Italy World Cup.
The public presentation of GITA in Milan will take place on October 3, 2025, at 6:30 p.m. at CUORE, the research center of Triennale. On this occasion, Nichols and Bumblienė will converse with the GITA team, sharing insights into their research and offering a glimpse of the biennials they are currently working on.
Catherine Nichols is an internationally acclaimed arts and literary scholar, curator and writer, whose work spans contemporary art, cultural history, and interdisciplinary research. Known for her ability to weave compelling narratives through exhibitions and cultural projects, Nichols has consistently explored art’s potential to address complex social, political, and environmental issues while fostering spaces for thought and conviviality.
In 2022, Catherine Nichols served as curator for the European Nomadic Biennial Manifesta 14 Prishtina, titled it matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise, spanning 25 sites of cultural significance that examined the transformative power of storytelling. From 2019 to 2021, she co-led Beuys 2021: 100 Jahre Joseph Beuys, a critical enquiry into the legacy of German artist Joseph Beuys, alongside Eugen Blume.
Catherine Nichols has also organised numerous monographic and thematic art exhibitions. These include Beuys: We are the Revolution (2008), The End of the 20th Century: The Best Is Yet to Come (2013) and Capital: Debt – Territory – Utopia (2016) for Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart – Berlin (in collaboration with Eugen Blume); and Everyone is an Artist: Cosmopolitical Exercises with Joseph Beuys (in collaboration with Isabelle Malz and Eugen Blume) at K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf.
An accomplished writer and editor, Catherine Nichols has published widely on contemporary art and has co-edited and authored several key publications. Highlights include The New Designer: Design as a Profession for Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (2023); Otherwise (2022), the companion book to Manifesta 14 Prishtina; Shine on me: Wir und die Sonne (2018) and Black Mountain College: An Interdisciplinary Experiment, 1933–1957 (2015).
Catherine Nichols is currently a curator at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin. Her recent projects at the museum include Alexandra Pirici – Attune (2024), Joseph Beuys – Werke aus der Sammlung der Nationalgalerie (2024), and Nationalgalerie: Eine Sammlung für das 21. Jahrhundert (2023). In 2025, she is curating solo shows featuring Colombian artist Delcy Morelos and Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj.
In 2026 she will curate the 18th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2026.
Neringa Bumblienė is a curator and writer whose work engages with contemporary art practices that sensitively reflect upon today’s global challenges while helping to imagine better futures. Often working on projects that involve new commissions, she invites artists into situations that stretch beyond their usual realm of practice.
She curated the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia in 2022 and 2014-2025 worked as a curator at the CAC in Vilnius.Her curatorial projects span large-scale international group exhibitions and performance festivals –including co-curating ’Borders Are Nocturnal Animals’ at the Palais de Tokyo and KADIST in Paris in 2024, and its second chapter at the CAC in Vilnius in 2025, and the Baltic Triennial 13 in 2018 –as well as solo presentations of emerging and established artists, including Augustas Serapinas in 2025, Robertas Narkus in 2023, 2022 and 2020, Pierre Huyghe in 2022, Michael Rakowitz in 2020,
Alejandro Cesarco in 2019, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané in 2018, Liam Gillick in 2017 and 2014, among others.
Her texts have been published in exhibition catalogues and art publications, including the Palais de Tokyo Magazine, Guide of the Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art, the catalogue of the 59th Biennale di Venezia, and the catalogue of the Baltic Triennial 13.
2024-2025 Bumblienė served as a mentor at the AAMC – Association of Art Museum Curators fellowship programme in New York. 2021-2024 she was a Board Member of the IKT – International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art.
Bumblienė is the artistic director and curator of the Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art, which held its inaugural edition in 2023.