ARTWORKS CONNECTS
Raphael Fonseca
Curatorial Residency Program in Athens: March 2026
Raphael Fonseca is Curator and head of the department of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art at the Denver Art Museum. He is a researcher interested in the intersections of art history, fiction, resilience, pleasure, and education, always through a transgeographical perspective. A Brazilian-born curator and writer, he is the curator of Counterpublic 2026 and the Taiwan Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. He is also one of the curators of the 2027 edition of Sequences, a visual arts biennial happening in Reykjavik, Iceland. He served as the chief curator of the 14th Mercosur Biennial, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2025, and as one of the co-curators of the 22nd SESC_Videobrasil Biennial, held at SESC 24 de Maio in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2023. He holds a PhD in Art History and Criticism at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
Raphael Fonseca’s curatorial practice focuses on the circulation of images across different temporalities and geopolitical contexts. He is particularly interested in artists who engage with fiction and world-making through diverse media, and who position the audience’s body within less conventional exhibition formats. He sees his time in Athens as an opportunity to learn about the local art scene and its institutional structures, and to listen to and learn not only from visual artists but from cultural workers more broadly. Rather than arriving with a fixed topic or predefined subject, his creative process as a curator centers on cultivating conversations—approaching the residency in an open, porous way shaped by dialogue, attentiveness, and exchange. Fonseca is also curious about potential connections between the art scene in Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean, particularly North Africa and the Middle East, and how these relationships might unfold through shared histories, image circulation, and cultural affinities.