Rossella Farinotti in dialogue with Affordable Art Fair Milano director Manuela Porcu...

The Affordable Art Fair became a focal point for a certain young market also in Italy. In this 2020 Director Manuela Porcu is continuing to promote and develop the fair at its 10th edition. AAF will be showed at Superstudio Più, the fair original venue in Milano, and it will be focused on a new way to collect art through more than 85 galleries from all over the world. Kooness team had a conversation with Manuela Porcu, director of the Affordable Art Fair in Milano.

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Dear Manuela, Affordable Art Fair, thanks to your and your team efforts and constant work, improved its ideas every year. In 2019 you also opened to new market areas such as China and Russia. How many countries participate this year?

It’s always interesting to see this interest from galleries coming from all over the world in promoting artists to Milan’s audience, and it’s an incredible opportunity as well for people living in the area to discover galleries and artists not exactly from around the corner. The 10th edition of the fair will showcase galleries from 18 countries, from Italy to Japan, from Liechtenstein to India, from Ukraine to Iran, South Korea, Turkey.

What are the challenges that you expect?

We always face a challenge: create the perfect match between an artwork and its potential collector. This summarize the hard work we do over the year around spotting and selecting the best galleries and, on the opposite side, designing an event able to remain fresh year over year and to attract different type of audiences: from newbies to experienced collectors, from people who “just want to browse” to people looking for their very first piece of art. Making both our exhibitors and visitors happy is the n.1 challenge indeed, but it’s also what we love to do.

Is Milano a crucial point for the “affordable art” you are dealing with?

After 10 years in the city, I can definitely say that yes, it is. Milan is one of the fast-growing cities in Italy, it’s one of the main business and cultural center and there are a lot of potential new collectors ready to be involved in the fabulous world of collecting art. And this is crucial for the Affordable Art Fair because it speaks directly to this audience. In Milan is growing up the new generation of art collectors – proudly speaking, partly thanks to the Affordable Art Fair: art lovers bringing new energy into the art system even if in a different shape rather their predecessors. Needs, taste, behavior are changing, the market is changing consequently, and Milan is the center of this transformation. 

Last year you had the “Mediterranean Collection” as a topic. What is the theme of this 2020?

We will be presenting again a special section dedicated to the Mediterranean, thanks to the collaboration of the two guested curators Ludovica Cadario and Paulo Nunes, but with the claim of this edition being “Experience the Unexpected” we wanted to address the attention back to the soul of the fair itself, with its rules-breaker attitude that is keeping it still fresh after 10 years. I’d say that the focus for this edition will be around discovering the joy of collecting contemporary art. The fair presents a variety of styles, medium, prices (with the price cap rised up to 7500€), sizes so that it’s up to the collectors-to-be to find its very personal theme in within the over 1000 artworks.
 

Cover image: Director Manuela Porcu. 

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