Anna Franceschini

Anna Franceschini (Pavia, IT, 1979) investigates objects, artefacts, commodities and their modes of display to rediscuss their role and configuration in the horizon of the aesthetics of capital. Underlying her investigation of reality is cinema through its constituent elements: movement, light, framing and editing. Kinetic sculptures, performances, bachelor machines, and photocopies are for the artist a cinema made by other means. Franceschini’s current work seeks to expand the concept of animation in sculptural terms. Reversing the terms of the discussion about "cinema as machine," the artists seeks to redirect the gaze toward the hypothesis of a "machine as cinema." By creating sculptural moving images, she turns commodities into quasi living beings and fabricates apparatuses whose subjectivity is emphasised within a mise-en-scène. Her films without film, made of machines and utensils, reflect on contemporaneity as a panorama of spectacular objects: in the womb of late capitalism, motorised accidents, animated byproducts of industrial processes become spectacle. Anna Franceschini holds a PhD in Visual and Media Studies and teaches at IULM University in Milan. Since 2022, she is Art-based Researcher for AN-ICON, a research group funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and hosted by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Milan.

Her videos and films have been presented in several festivals, including: Rotterdam Film Festival; Locarno Film Festival; Torino Film Festival, Courtisane in Ghent and Vilnius Film Festival. In 2017 her project Cartaburro won the Italian Council grant, promoted by the Ministry of Culture. In 2019 she made the short film Bustrofedico, a special project for the Italian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. She is a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grantee for the year 2022.

The artist has had several solo exhibitions including Nights Out at the Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna (2025); VENERE & MARTE in collaboration with Polaroid Foundation, at VILLAE, Tivoli (2025) ; Fresh window. The art of display & display at Museum Tinguely, Basel (2024); All Those Stuffed Shirts at the Trienniale of Milan (2023); Il salotto cattivo at Campoli Presti, Paris (2022); Did you know you have a broken glass in the window? at Vistamarestudio, Milan (2022); Cartaburro at Almanac Inn, London and at Almanac Inn, Turin (2018); Before they break, before they due, they fly! with André Romao at Vera Cortes, Lisbon (2015); Lezioni d’italiano curated by M. Farronato at Fiorucci Art Trust, London (2014); Splendid is the ligh in the city of night curated by A. Viliani at the Italian Cultural Institute, Paris(2013); Lets’s Fuuuuck! I’ll fuck anything that mooooves! curated by M. Farronato with R. Selvaggio at Volcano Extravaganza, Stromboli (2011).

Her work featured in several group exhibitions including Fresh Window. The Art of Display & Display of Art at Tinguely Museum, Basel (2024), Amigos y Amigas, curated by Fabio Cherstich at Palazzo Tiepolo, Venice (2024); The Uncanny House, curated by Ilaria Marotta e Andrea Baccin at Casa di Goethe, Rome (2023); French Exit at Emanuela Campoli, Paris (2023); JET SET (performance), curated by Chiara Bertini and Fanny Borel at MUDAM, Luxembourg (2023); DIARIO NOTTURNO. DI SOGNI, INCUBI E BESTIARI IMMAGINARI, curated by Joel Valabrega and Clementine Proby at MAXXI (2023); After laughter comes tears, curated by J. Valabrega at Mudam, Luxembourg (2023); Passeggiate intergalattiche with Nanda Vigo at Vistamare, Pescara (2023); Extase de L’Abîme, curated by Cristiano Raimondi at Società delle Api, Monaco (2022); Sartor Resartus, curated by Jeppe Ugelvig at Huset for Kunst og Design in Holstebro (2021); Smoke and mirrors curated by Joao Laia at DAMA, Turin (2017).

Several institutional collections include her work including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; The Nouveau Musée National, Monaco; The MAXXI and the MACRO, Rome; GAMeC, Bergamo and The Nicoletta Fiorucci Collection, London.