Lorenzo Graf
Curator, Writer, and Art Historian

Exhibitions
Writing
About

WRITING

Mad Space
Dissertation
Goethe University
2024–ongoing

My dissertation project in contemporary art history investigates the role of public sculpture in the cultural representations of madness during psychiatric deinstitutionalization in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Attending to the historically and geographically specific changes in the mental health system of the time, my inquiry draws entirely on primary sources scattered across archives in New York State and City.

Front cover of the exhibiton catalogue of “Sculpture on Shoreline Sites” on Ward’s Island, New York, New York, 1983-1984. © Artist Representing Environmental Art, Inc.

How Can Art Challenge AI’s Right-Wing Turn?
Workshop Review
SCHIRN MAG
2026

This review reflects on the workshop Generating Counter-Publics? – Art, AI, and Right-Wing Dynamics, examining how art might challenge the entanglement of artificial intelligence and the aesthetics of the New Right. Drawing on contributions by artists and scholars, it considers the infrastructural dimensions of AI-driven image production and the possibilities of artistic counter-publics.

Rahel grote Lambers, Metapolitics in Domestic Disguise, 2022, 5 Objekte, je 30 × 30 × 1cm, UVDruckauf Leinen, Bambus, Stickgarn © Courtesy of the artist.

Superform und Supermeme: Gedanken
zu Thomas Bayrles Kunst und Meme-Culture
Essay
SCHIRN MAG
2026

Co-written with Dominik Laute, this essay explores the resonance between Bayrle’s formal principle of composition and contemporary meme culture. Drawing on theories of memetics, we examine the technical reproduction of individuality.

Thomas Bayrle. Fröhlich Sein!, 2026, Ausstellungsansicht. © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2026, Foto: Norbert Miguletz.

In search of oracular places at the 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts
Review
Recessed.Space
2025

Co-authored with Riccardo Buck, this review reconsiders Jože Plečnik’s landmark urban set pieces in the light of Co-authored with Riccardo Buck, this review reconsiders Jože Plečnik’s landmark urban interventions in light of Chus Martínez’s Biennale. The second consecutive discussion of the Biennale of Graphic Arts, the piece reflects on the place of printmaking today.

The 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, Museum of Modern Art (MG+), Aili Vint, Detail of the Sea, 1979. Photo: Jaka Babnik. MGLC Archive.

Keine leichte Sache. Lin May Saeed in der GAMeC
Review
Passe-Avant
2024

Travelling through the Northern mountains of Italy, I payed a visit to the newly launched cultural program of GAMeC—Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo. In a close-up onto the work of German-Iraki artist Lin May Saeed (1973–2023), centerpoint of the parcours, I reflect on the project’s title and conceptual intent of "Thinking Like a Mountain."

Lin May Saeed, The Liberation of Animals from their Cages III, 2008. Image courtesy of the Estate of Lin May Saeed & Jacky Strenz, Frankfurt/Main. Photography: Jens Heine

Strudel and Melancholia. Re-reading the 9th Biennale Gherdëina
Review
Passe-Avant
2024

In this review, I look for traces of melancholia in the artistic works of the 9th Biennale Gherdëina in Val Gardena, South Tyrol. The piece asks how some of the works reflect critically on ecological processes in relation to human presence and ecotourism—particularly in the context of a biennial in the midst of nature.

Janis Rafa, Landscape Depressions, 2023. Film still, single-channel video with sound, 25 min. Courtesy the Artist © Janis Rafa

Dreaming Buried Promises Anew at the 35th Ljubljana Biennale
Review
Passe-Avant
2023

Co-written with Zishi Han, this review untangles the continuities between the history of the Biennale of Graphic Arts and the latest edition curated by Ibrahim Mahama.

Kagiso Patrick Mautloa, Rolling Trolley, 2013. Courtesy the artist and Bag Factory Artists’ Studios

Sonic Tractions
Master’s thesis
Goethe University, Städelschule
2023

Sparked by Tirdad Zolghadr’s Realty (Hatje Cantz, 2022), this practice-led research focuses on the sound art by Ultra-red and Emeka Ogboh. Linking their urban interventions with ongoing struggles against gentrification in Berlin and Lagos, this paper carves out the potential for sound to move beyond the representative domain, and to nurture “tractions” capable of countering dispossession and infrastructural privatisation.

Awarded with the Cellini-Preis 2024.

Yaba bus parks in Lagos. Foto: Lorenzo Graf

Every Breath You Take
Interview with Alice Morey
Passe-Avant
2020

On the occasion of her solo exhibition at Hošek Contemporary, Alice Morey engages in a conversation on her practice.

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