Giuliana Racco is a visual artist and researcher. Through fieldwork, archival research, material production, and experimentation, she creates works that critically examine notions of borders, inclusion/exclusion, and desire. Her practice takes the form of participatory projects, videos, publications, drawings, texts, and other hybrid formats.
Her work has been presented in international institutions such as Fundació Suñol and Arts Santa Mònica (Barcelona), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (Croatia), Winterthur Fotomuseum (Switzerland), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg and LE CAP Centre d’arts plastiques de Saint-Fons (France), Kulturcentrum Ronneby (Sweden), Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Italy), and Frith Street Gallery (London), among others. Her large-scale photograph Revelando, based on participatory art workshops with communities at risk of social exclusion, is permanently exhibited at the Centre Cívic El Sortidor (Barcelona).
Her short film High Roads (2023) is based on the testimonies of four Palestinian women who practice SUMUD (everyday steadfastness), using their bodies, breath, and minds as tools for resisting military occupation. The film has been screened at festivals including RETURN! Film and Art Festival (Weimar), L’Alternativa (Barcelona), Carlota International Political Film Festival (Vienna), Interfilm (Berlin), International Kurzfilmwoche (Regensburg), Les Filministes (Montreal), and the Chicago Palestine Film Festival. It was awarded the BMW Group Prize for Social Sustainability in Regensburg.
Racco has participated in artist residencies and research programs in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, Luxembourg, Palestine, and Colombia. She has held key roles in academic and curatorial contexts: Assistant Professor in the graduate visual arts program led by Lewis Baltz at IUAV University of Venice; Associate Professor of Socio-cultural Anthropology at BAU (Barcelona); Coordinator of the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2008–2011); Consultant for the Encounters program at Juntos Aparte (BIENALSUR, 2017); and Head Translator for MONOS Editions. She was a board member of PAAC (Plataforma de Artistes de Catalunya) from 2018 to 2021 and served on the Program Commission of Hangar (2017–2021).
She is currently a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University (Toronto). In 2023, she co-edited, with Lucía Egaña Rojas, the publication La cultura no es una autopista, quizás los museos puedan ser jardines, a manual for accessibility in the Spanish and Catalan arts and culture sector based on collective research.
Her work has been supported by institutions including the Canada Council for the Arts, Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Fundación “la Caixa” (Art for Change), Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, the Government of Catalonia (OSIC), Hangar, and La Escocesa (Barcelona). In 2014, MONOS Editions published Cross-Section of an Unlearning Process, based on her work with an experimental research program in Palestinian refugee camps.
