Alessandra Cianetti (she/her) is a London-based art worker whose tools are organisation building, collaborative curation, and research. Her interconnected practice spans contemporary art, performance art, grant-making, education, and charity settings, exploring systemic socio-political issues with a focus on intersectional borders, social justice, and the politics of labour.
She is currently Chief Operating Officer of Art History Link-Up, an art and education charity for young people. She is the founder of performingborders, a collectively-run platform that since 2016 commissions and weaves practice-based knowledge around live art and borders with UK-based and international performance artists, thinkers, organisers, and art workers. Alessandra co-directed performingborders until July 2025, and since then contributes on a volunteer basis as a non-executive director through writing, advocacy, and care. She also supervises PhD students at the Transart Institute for Creative Research, where she also served as Co-Programme Leader Consultant (October 2023 – July 2024).
From January 2020 to July 2023, Alessandra was Curator and Project manager at the Bagri Foundation, a London-based grant-making charity supporting national and international projects centring multidisciplinary artists from Asia and its diaspora. From 2013 to 2017, she was Curator and Co-director of Something Human, a migrant-led arts organisation presenting experimental live and visual art practices across the UK, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
Over the years, Alessandra has conceived, curated, produced, researched, written, presented, and facilitated work across multidisciplinary and transnational art projects, programmes, and collective organising in the UK, Europe, and internationally. Her collaborative work has been built with co-conspirators, museums, arts institutions, community centres, independent spaces, and universities, and has been supported by Arts Council England, the European Cultural Foundation, the National Arts Council Singapore, and the Necessity Fund.
Alessandra mentors MA students for the Coltiviamoci project at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, and has served on steering groups including Artists Direct Change, an equal platform for emerging visual artists with learning disabilities created by Intoart, London. In 2022, she was part of the Culture and Diversity Advisory Forum for the Lewisham Borough of Culture, and from 2018 to 2021 she was an organiser of Migrants in Culture.
She holds three postgraduate degrees with distinction: an MRes in Art Theory and Philosophy (Central Saint Martins, London), an MA in Economics and Management of Cultural Activities and Tourism (Tor Vergata University, Rome), and an MA in Economics and Management of Arts and Cultural Activities (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice).
CV below [please scroll down and up if you cannot see it]: