Saverio Cantoni ~ Keywords: activism - aesthetic of access - chronopoetics - Deaf sound-art - Disability Justice* - live performances - visual sound - sound haptics
Saverio Cantoni (b. 1985, IT) is a white-passing cyborg, disabled – oral Deaf – artist based in Berlin. Situating their practice in the sonics, from haptic experiences to assistive technologies, Saverio has been experimenting with interferences, noises, and glitches for the past ten years to create participatory and accessible live performances. They choreographs sounds in several forms, mixing texts, visuals, and audible experiences. In an ongoing exploration of the “aesthetics of access,” Saverio’s practice employs multiple materials as a possibility to allow different access points to the same narrative.
Saverio’s artistic practice is rooted in countering ableism with an intersectional approach,* building counter-narratives to address its societal internalization. Scientific inquiries, speculative fiction, and mythologies are equally meaningful to their understanding of social and environmental justice, celebrating not-human-only dimensions and rejecting traditional organizations of media and techniques in art to fight normative expectations of functionality and productivity.
Working through the lenses of Crip theory, and Queer theory, Saverio’s practice aims to destabilize existing power structures and to rethink the normative understanding of sensorial experiences. Their work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, i.a. at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2022; State of Concept, Athens, 2021; HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2020 and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2018; as well as other artistic frameworks, such as having recently hosted the radioshow mixed feelings on Refuge Worldwide. They have been invited for residencies i.a., at Rupert’s residency program, Vilnius (2023), Villa Romana, Florence (2024), and Pivô, São Paulo (2024), as well as having participated in the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Salzburg (2021). In 2025, Saverio will be part of the multi-disciplinary post-academy program at Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht.
In addition to their solo practice, Saverio founded Density Around Void, an accessible art collective, and is actively participating in the Sickness Affinity Group (SAG), a group of art workers and activists who work on the topic of sickness/disability and/or are affected by sickness/disability. SAG hosts a bimonthly peer support group and several other projects that sometimes find their place in street protests, friends’ gardens, video calls, and occasionally art institutions.
* Disability Justice, and its ten principles have been developed by Sins Invalid, a project that supports and showcases artists with disabilities. It focuses on artists of color and LGBTQ/gender-variant artists, who have been historically marginalized. One of its founders, Leroy Moore, reminded me of intersectionality as a form of solidarity as it was in the Rainbow Coalition project, founded by the African American civil rights leader and deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party's Illinois chapter Fred Hampton.
Learn more about Saverio Cantoni's 20 minute performance Forbidden love’s journal for Chameleon Orbit ~ DAI's Aeroponic Acts 2024 at Centrale Fies in Italy.
Learn more about Saverio Cantoni's written MA thesis (DAI, 2024): coming soon