Caterina Barbieri appointed Artistic Director of Venice Biennale Music Department
The decision has been called a “vote of confidence in the intelligence and genius of the new generations”
Italian producer Caterina Barbieri has been made the new Artistic Director of the Music Department of the Venice Biennale.
The appointment was approved yesterday (November 5) by the official Board of Directors, which is chaired by Pietrangelo Buttafuoco.
As a result, for a two-year term between 2025 and 2026, Barbieri will be in charge of curating the Venice Biennale’s annual music festival, Biennale Music.
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Announcing the news on Instagram, the Berlin-based artist said: “i am beyond excited and honored to have been appointed by @labiennale as the artistic director of Biennale Musica for the two-year term 2025-2026.”
“Venice is a constant source of inspiration: its mutability, the echoes and reflections, its silences and its liminality. its resilience and yearning for infinity. its dissolution of space and time. all of this is already music”, she continued.
Buttafuoco has said that Barbieri's "classical training combined with experimentation and the use of the most innovative technologies" makes her "a living bridge between eras, styles and sectors".
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And that her appointment is "a vote of confidence in the intelligence and genius of the new generations, the true antennas of the future”.
He is hopeful that her "approach to sincere research and curiosity about the contemporary music scene will allow her to build a festival here in Venice that can engage new and broader audiences”.
Barbieri is an electro-acoustic composer, known for creating soaring synth soundscapes.
Over the course of her career, she has released eight studio albums, performed at a number of international music festivals including Unsound, Primavera Sound and Sónar, and presented work at prestigious institutions including the Barbican Centre in London and the Venice Biennale itself.
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In 2021, she founded light-years, an independent record label specialising in “forward-thinking, daring areas of artistic expression", according to its website.
The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895 as an international cultural exhibition covering music, art, architecture, cinema, theatre and dance. The annual Biennale Music festival was introduced in 1930.
Barbieri is taking over the role of director from Italian composer Lucia Ronchetti.
She also recently came the the end of her five-date US tour, which included performances in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
For more information on the Biennale Music, check here.
Meena Sears is Mixmag's Digital Intern, follow her on Instagram
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