Artist in conversation with Ozge Samanci and Janet Dees

Join us to celebrate our current exhibition Federico Solmi: The Great Farce | RSVP

Groundbreaking multimedia artist Federico Solmi will be in conversation with Özge Samanci, Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program Faculty Board at Northwestern University, to discuss the technical and conceptual aspects of his work, which uses satire to explore history and mythmaking. Their conversation will be moderated by exhibition curator Janet Dees.

Federico Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy, in 1973. Since 1999, he has lived and worked in New York. Most recently, his work was the subject of a major exhibition, Federico Solmi: Ship Of Fools, at the Venice Biennale (Palazzo Dona’ Dalle Rose).

His groundbreaking work was recognized with a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2009. Solo museum surveys include American Circus at the Haifa Museum of Art in Haifa, Israel, in 2016; The Grand Masquerade at the Tarble Art Center in Charleston, Illinois, in 2019; and Joie de Vivre at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, in 2022–23.  

His work was included in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s traveling exhibition The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today. In 2021, he was featured in the Phillips Collection’s centennial exhibition Seeing Differently. He has participated in several international biennial exhibitions, including the SITE Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico in 2010; Venice Biennale in 2011. 

From 2016 to 2019, Solmi was Visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art and Yale School of Drama, New Haven, Connecticut. He was appointed Guest Critic at the Yale University School of Art for 2022.