The Generation of Imposters?
How did I get here and why is it a happy ending... or a new beginning?
At the age of 14, when I started thinking about what to major at a University, my first idea was to become a journalist. My Dad told me journalism was an extremely difficult field for a woman to succeed. So I chose entrepreneurship (writing this now I wonder why he thought it was an easy field for women to succeed in?)
It was the time of Vogue, Sex and the City, the beginning of street style blogging, the boom of it-girls and before the iPhone. Entrepreneurship seemed to apply to everything – fashion, media and that’s what I was really interested in. So it was until I saw an exhibition of Cy Twombly at Tate Modern in 2008.
I had no clue who Cy Twombly was and knew almost nothing about contemporary art. What’s worse, I didn’t know how to handle the overwhelming power it exercised over me. I had no choice but to follow the call and become an art historian and a curator. Since then I went through many stages of professional transformation but never questioned the power of emotions art can bring.
In 2018 I accompanied my friend to a theater mostly for a social event and an occasion to dress up. It was a show by the National Canadian Ballet. I had zero prediction of what it would mean until it came to a third act – Crystal Pite’s Emergence (2009).
And then it happened again. The art revealed its divine power. Unlike the first time, I already knew what it meant – there was no way back. I needed to know everything about ballet or how Francis Bacon’s painting could be transformed into reality through dancers’ bodies (what I saw happening at the stage).
There was no chance I could admit out loud that being a well-renowned art curator I had zero knowledge about the contemporary dance stage. Therefore I pretended to be a connoisseur in front of experts (luckily enough I had some around) and listened to them carefully. Next year I spent travelling around the world, checking all the mentioned artists, venues, festivals, people. And that was not the last pivot I made since.
Then came the pandemic, then the war, and yet another war… Here we go, at 34 I have 2 majors and 15 years of experience of curating and cultural entrepreneurship, of making exhibitions and producing festivals. I finally write and am still not a journalist (for better or worse). It is at least the fourth attempt to get over the imposter syndrome and hopefully the most successful one, because whatever pivots I made I always kept one thing – my love to search for all sorts of beautiful things and curate them into stories.
This newsletter is dedicated to my hunt for all sorts of great objects, arts, books, materials, series and, more importantly, performances around Europe and (if you allow it this honour) will curate the cultural experiences you may get.
Can’t wait for this journey to begin!
Miri Nissi