Angela Rui is an Italian curator and researcher based in Milan, working in design theory and criticism.
She believes that design is positioned as a critical practice that problematises conventional ways of inhabiting and experiencing the world founded on human control and exploitation of other bodies, and that designers could operate in domains that demand their capacity to make translations, raise awareness, visualise challenges and inequalities as well as not-yet-recognised collective commons.
Among other projects, she co-curated I See That I See What You don’t See, the Dutch Pavilion for Broken Nature – the XXII Triennale di Milano (2019), Faraway, So Close – the 25th Design Biennial of Ljubljana (2017) and collaborated as researcher with the Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam). She recently curated Aquaria. Or the Illusion of a Boxed Sea (maat, Lisbon) that looks to aquariums as theoretical devices that more than other objects embody the divide Nature/Culture.
Until 2016 she taught at the School of Design (Politecnico di Milano), at the Master of Interior Design at NABA (Milan), at the Social Design Master – Design Academy Eindhoven (2017-2020), where she’s currently teaching Pedagogies of the Sea at the Geo-Design Master programme.
Photo credit: Mattia Balsamini