Biography
Fiamma Montezemolo is both an artist (MFA, San Francisco Art Institute) and a Cultural Anthropologist (Ph.D, University Orientale of Naples). She is an established scholar in border studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema & Digital Media at the University of California, Davis. As an artist she situates her work as a critical extension of the ethnographic turn in contemporary art. She works with various media, including installation, video, digital photography, archives, cartography and ethnography. Her artwork has been widely exhibited both nationally and internationally.
She is represented by the Magazzino Dell’Arte Moderna gallery in Rome.
She is the author of La Mia Storia Non La Tua: La Dinamica Della Costruzione Dell’identita’ Chicana Tra Etero- e Auto-rappresentazioni (Guerini, 2004) and Senza volto: L’etnicità e il genere nel Movimento Zapatista (Liguori, 1999). She is also a co-author of Here is Tijuana (Blackdog Publishing, 2006) and co-editor of Tijuana Dreaming: Life & Art at the Global border (Duke UP, 2012).
Among her most recent exhibitions, performances and screenings are: 2017 Opera Viva: le opere in costruzione, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome
2016 Sublimina, Museo delle Mura, Roma
2016 Artist talk with Lucia Sanroman, Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco
2016 The Secret, Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (SOLO exhibition)
2016 Gaze, an Homage to Chantal Ackerman, ATA (Artists' Television Access
2016 Tecnologias de la Imaginacion, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City
2016 MUDEC (Museum of Cultures), Milan (SOLO Screening)
2016 Border Disorder, Montalvo Arts Center
2016 Unlived, Culture Now, ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), London
2016 Cinema magic film night, Dolby gallery, San Francisco
2016 Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History, Calit2 Gallery, San Diego
2015 Residency Montalvo Arts Center (one month)
2015 Traces, Magazzino dell’Arte Moderna, (SOLO show), Roma
2014 Attunement, Armory Center for the Arts, Los Angeles
2014 Love, Montalvo Arts Center, California
2014- Film Screening Echo:
Accademia Belle Arti of Naples;
The Elephant in the Room, Open School East/Royal College of Arts, London;
ALA, (Antropologia Latinoamericana), screening followed by a discussion with Nestor Garcia Canclini, Mexico City;
Cine Sin Fronteras, Los Angeles Latino American Cinematheque, Los Angeles;
MAXXI (National Museum of the 21st Century Arts) BASE (SOLO screening followed by panel discussion with Hou Hanru, MAXXI director; Viviana Gravano, Istituto delle Belle Arti, Napoli; Iain Chambers, Universita’ Orientale di Napoli; Emi Fontana, West of Rome Public Arts), Rome;
Church of the Epiphany (SOLO Screening followed by panel discussion with Emi Fontana, West of Rome Public Arts; Rita Gonzalez, LACMA; Glenn Phillips, Getty Research Institute), Los Angeles;
Morelia International Film Festival, (Cine sin Frontera), Mexico;
COMA (Center for Modern Literature, Materialism and Aesthetics)
Santa Barbara University, CA (SOLO Screening)
2013 Experiments in Portraiture, Intimacy and Place, HaudenschildGarage, San Diego
2013 Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History Satellite Exhibition, Worth Ryder Art Gallery, UC Berkeley
2013 Evidence: Artistic Responses to the Drug Cartel Wars, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco
2013 Art and geography: aesthetics and practices of spatial knowledge, International interdisciplinary conference/exhibition, University of Lyon (France)
2012- Film screening Traces:
Accademia delle Belle Arti of Naples;
Mexican Consulate, Los Angeles;
Cinemigrante International Film Festival, Barcelona;
University of Southern California (Cine Sin Fronteras), Los Angeles;
Cinemigrante International Film Festival, Buenos Aires;
Montenegro Film Festival (official selection), Montenegro;
Congreso Mexicano de Antropología y Etnología, Mexico City;
MEXIC ARTE Museum, Austin (SOLO Screening); VisualFEST2013, (VisualFEST Award and Special Jury Award), University of Rome, Italy; DOCSDF, International Documentary Film Festival, Mexico City (Official Selection: International short film category); Bordocs, Tijuana (norteño selection: short film); Morelia International Film Festival, Mexico (Cine Sin Fronteras); Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography, Rome; University of San Francisco (SOLO Screening); EASA, Paris; Fonoteca Nacional, Ciudad de México; New Mexico University, Albuquerque; Bern University, Swiss; University of Baja California, Tijuana
2012 Mind, one day event, organized by Stanford University Multimedia Meeting of Arts and Science
2012 Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
2012 Twenty-third International Juried Exhibition, Viridian Artists (juried by Chrissie Iles, Curator at the Whitney Museum, NYC), New York
2012 Selected Award Winning Artist Dublin Biennale, Dublin
2012 Border Alchemies, Queen’s Nails Project, San Francisco: SOLO Exhibition
2011 Pachanga 2011, Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco
2011 Guest-Artist in Proyecto Coyote, MDE11 (Medellin Biennale), Colombia 2011 Medellin-Tijuana, Taller 7, Medellin
2011 SICA Annual Juried Exhibition, New Jersey
2011 The New Wave, Kadist, San Francisco
2011 You Are Here, HERE, New York
2011 Bay Area Currents, ProArt, Oakland
2011 Out of Context, Gallery 454, San Francisco
2011 MFA show, Winery, Treasure Island
2010 Borders, Root Division Art Gallery, San Francisco
2010 Sensing Territories, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco
2010 Ethnographic Terminalia, Du Mois Gallery, New Orleans
2010 Reading Performance Workshop (as part of Renee Green’s solo exhibition
Endless Dreams & Time-based Streams), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
‘Fireflies’ is part of the Kadist Foundation Art collection (Paris-San Francisco).
‘A Line to Come’ is part of the Montalvo Arts Collection (California)
‘Neon Afterwords’ is part of the ASU Museum Collection, (Arizona)
