Chiara Montanari

Chiara Montanari makes long performances about waiting, talking and being looked at. She trained as a dancer in Bologna, stopped dancing at twenty five and started sitting still instead.

Her works are simple to describe and hard to watch: a person waiting six hours to be called, two strangers talking about the weather until they run out. She films every performance in a single take, with no cuts, so the film is as long as the work.

She often asks people who are not performers to take part, through adverts in local papers. Small Talk was cast that way, from people who said they were bad at small talk.

The museum has worked with her since 2019, and performs Waiting Room for One twice a year with a different performer each time.