Marianna Orlotti

Marianna Orlotti is a doctoral researcher in Heritage Science at Sapienza University of Rome and a visiting PhD student at the University of Cologne within the Global South Studies Center. She has a background in art history, curatorial practice, and education.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Heritage Sciences from the University of Turin (2012) and a Master’s degree in Communication and Enhancement of Contemporary Artistic Heritage from the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts (2014). She further specialized through the postgraduate curatorial program CAMPO at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin (2017) and the Executive Master in Cultural Heritage Management at the Polytechnic University of Milan (2022), with a dissertation on the use of contemporary art in the reactivation of minor Italian cultural and environmental heritage sites and in the development of sustainable strategies aligned with pressing matters such as social and environmental justice, access and representation, racism, and the colonial legacy. Over the years, she has worked as a curator and project manager for several cultural institutions and artist residency programs, as well as a teacher in Art History and Museology. Since 2023, she has been collaborating with the Royal Residences of Savoy – Regional Directorate of National Museums. She is also a member of the Italian ICOM Working Group on Provenance Research.

Her doctoral project, supervised by Prof. Patrizia Dragoni (University of Macerata) and Dr. Tatiana Chemi (Aalborg University), investigates the role of artists and artistic practices in advancing decolonial perspectives within Italian museums, with a particular focus on ethnographic collections. Her research examines how collaborations between heritage institutions and artists can help unveil colonial legacies in museum practices, fostering institutional self-criticism and alternative forms of knowledge production. Within this framework, her field research employs an autoethnographic approach, drawing on art-based and participatory methodologies. It focuses on two previously unpublished non-European ethnographic collections gathered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by members of the former Royal House of Savoy, which serve as a laboratory for experimentation of decolonial practices that engage artists, scholars, activists, cultural and educational associations, local communities, and diasporic groups to generate counter-narratives capable of challenging entrenched power dynamics and epistemological hierarchies within museum institutions.

Contact

E-mail: marianna.orlotti@uniroma1.it
Mobile: +39 348 410 0804