Eugenio Viola

Eugenio Viola (Naples, 1975) is an Italian art critic and curator based in Bogotá.

Viola is the current Chief Curator of the Bogota Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO), Colombia. He is a prolific contributor of Artforum. Previously, he was curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 59th Biennale. He is also part of the jury and decision committee of the Julius Baer Prize for Latin American women artists.

As a thinker, Eugenio Viola is one "of the most talented and inspirational young people who are driving forward the art world today” as stated by the British art magazine Apollo in 2014. He was voted the best Italian curator in 2016 and 2019 by the Italian art magazine Artribune.

Born in Italy, Viola received his BA in “Cultural Heritage Conservation” from the University Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples (2001), his MA in “Organization and Communication of the Visual Arts” from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan (2002), and his Ph.D. in “Methods and Methodologies of Archaeological and Historical-Artistic Research” from the University of Salerno (2010).

Viola is the current Chief Curator of The Bogota Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO), a leading Colombian institution. His inaugural project there was the first institutional solo exhibition of work by Teresa Margolles (Estorbo, 2020) in Colombia, which opened in March 2019. During his tenure, he has commissioned major projects by Dor Guez (Catástrofe, 2021), Luz Lizarazo (Cicatrices, 2021–2022), Voluspa Jarpa (Sindemia, 2021–2022) and Miguel Angel Rojas (Regreso a la Maloca, 2021) among other artists.

He curates at the MAMBO ‘The Julius Baer Art Prize for Latin American Female Artists’, a biennial award initiated by Julius Baer and the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art – MAMBO, the first prize of its kind held in Latin America.

The award winner of the inaugural edition of the prize, Chilean artist Voluspa Jarpa (Rancagua, 1971), portrayed a necessary memory of the social unrest that occurred in both Chile and Colombia in late 2019. Her project Sindemia provided a multifaceted approach to the urgency for documentation and visibility of human rights violations during the protests. Sindemia will tour at the Gabriela Mistral Center (GAM) in Santiago, in March 2023, and at the MUNTREF, Center of Contemporary Art (Hotel of Immigrants), Buenos Aires, in July 2023.

From 2017 to 2019, Viola was the Senior Curator at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), in Western Australia, where his curatorial practice was focused on cultivating and strengthening the institution's relationship with the Asia-Pacific region. He presented the first Australian solo exhibition of Kimsooja (Zone of Nowhere, 2018), in which the work extended beyond the walls of PICA and into the streets of Perth, where iterations of To Breathe – The Flags (2012-2018) materialized as site specific installations around the city. Viola has also been instrumental in a promising partnership between PICA and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum as part of the City of Perth and Taipei Residency Exchange Program.