Vanini Belarmino

Vanini Belarmino joined the National Gallery Singapore as Assistant Director (Programmes) in November 2016. She leads the content development, artwork and performance commissions for the Gallery Children’s Biennale, Children’s Festival: Small Big Dreamers, Light to Night Festival and helms the Gallery’s public programmes.

Prior to this appointment, Vanini worked as an independent curator, producer and writer. In 2007, she joined walkscreen and Akademie der Künste in leading the EU-art-peace project Challenging Walls in Israel and Palestine, which involved artists from wall-divided societies. She founded Belarmino&Partners in Berlin and Singapore in 2008, where she initiated ZENSORS and Intimate Moments, a series of interdisciplinary collaborations and breathing exhibitions in non-conventional spaces such as parks, cafes, clubs, bathrooms, offices, kunsthalle and performing arts spaces. She was in the core team of Public Art Lab’s Media Facades Festival Berlin until the expansion of its programme across 8 European cities. Vanini was invited by the WeltMuseum Wien in Austria to present a Southeast Asian dance and film programme for the Danced Creation: Asia’s Mythological Past and the Living Present exhibition in 2013. She curated the artistic programmes for blockbuster exhibitions such as Dali, Mind of a Genius, Van Gogh: Alive, Titanic, and Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal and inaugural year of ArtScience Late at the ArtScience Museum, Marina Bay Sands in 2011-2015.

While working for the Asia-Europe Foundation, she established the performing arts programmes: I’mPULSE (music) and Pointe to Point (dance) and managed ASEMUS (Asia-Europe Museum Network).

Vanini has lectured at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. She was a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship in New York City. She obtained B.A. Theater Arts from the University of the Philippines and earned a Diploma for European Cultural Project Management from the Marcel Hicter Foundation in Belgium.

Starting her journey in the arts at the age of 18 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, to date, Vanini has spearheaded artistic programmes in 28 countries. She has lived and worked in Manila, Bangkok, London, Amsterdam, New York and Berlin.

Statement about my work

I have been gifted with an amazing profession of bringing different people together, empowering voices and creating space for encounter through the arts. Influencing ways of thinking and affecting change in people’s lives is integral to the realization of what I do every day.

Topic of Interests

My curatorial interest focuses on the productive potential of encounters by identifying and facilitating collaborations between artists across genres. These works create new experiences by situating the body as an object in a museum or public space.

Discourse on performance in the museum space; relationship between cultural policy and artistic programming; audience development and engagement

Publications

Vanini has written extensively about the performing arts, multidisciplinary art practice, dance, festival programming and cultural policy for various publications and online platforms like Tanz Connexions, TanzRaumBerlin, Korean Arts Management Services’ the Apro and Culture360.
These articles have been translated to German and Korean.