Yulia Topchiy, Paola Gallio, and Natasha Becker, Founders of Assembly Room 52:28
The Remix welcomes Yulia Topchiy, Natasha Becker, and Paola Gallio, the amazing co-founders of Assembly Room, who staged 12 exhibitions, 16 performances, and monthly curatorial meetups in the gallery’s first year. They share their origin story—an arranged marriage—and how they fill a void for independent women curators. They didn’t think there was a need for another gallery so they created space and a home for independent curators: a commercial gallery with a nonprofit soul. The reasons why they made that choice includes finances as well as freedom, flexibility, and ownership over mission. They walk us through their Open Call platform, the gallery space vs the project space downstairs, what they’re looking for in a proposal, and their interest in mentorship, collaboration, and family. Toward the end of the conversation, their kinship with artist-run spaces becomes clear and there are shout outs to Spring Break, Pioneer Works, Canada gallery, A.I.R. gallery, and others who paved the way for their new model. We end on day jobs and dreams for the future. Picture utopia on a beach.
Assembly Room is an art gallery and space for independent women curators to achieve success through community. We believe in coming together to collaborate, break the rules, defy the status quo, and create compelling art, exhibitions, and experiences.Assembly Room’s three founding curators are: Natasha Becker, Paola Gallio, Yulia Topchiy.
Yulia Topchiy is dedicated to building a community of strong independent women curators through professional collaboration, sharing opportunities, and providing curatorial support. Originally from Russia, she spent the past sixteen years working for commercial galleries, auction houses, art fairs, and not-for-profits in New York City. As the founder of CoWorker Projects, she specialized in curating projects and exhibitions of video and film art with emerging and established artists. Until recently Yulia served as a Senior Gallery Relations Manager at Artsy, where she specialized in online sales, global promotion, and exposure through online strategies. She also played an important role in several Artsy Projects initiatives where, along with Elena Soboleva, she created commissions, performances, and site-specific installations. Yulia is an ardent curator, advisor, and art collector.
Natasha Becker was born in South Africa and has spent the last sixteen years living and working between Cape Town and New York. An expert in contemporary African and African American art, she has curated a number of exhibitions in collaboration with artists, curators, collectors, galleries, museums, and foundations in South Africa and the United States. She recently co-curated two exhibitions, “Perilous Bodies,” and “Radical Love,” at the distinguished Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice to inaugurate their new art gallery in New York (2019). Her past experience includes curating exhibitions at the Goodman Gallery (South Africa), organizing public programs in global art history at the Clark Art Institute, and launching an international video art festival (both Massachusetts, USA).
Paola Gallio is an Italian immigrant and independent curator in New York. Her mission is to nurture young and under-represented artists, providing them with much needed resources and opportunities for their long-term success. She has collaborated with public institutions and non-profit art organizations, including No Longer Empty, Soloway Gallery, Carriage Trade in New York; Marsèlleria Permanent Exhibition, Spazio Morris, FDV, Lambretto Art Project in Milan; Micamoca the Berlin Biennale, BB6; and Mariano Pichler Collection. In her previous life in Milan, she served as the Director of the non-profit space Neon>fdv, and co-curator of Short Show and Short Visit projects. She is the advising curator for Boccanera Gallery, based in Trento and Milan, and a passionate writer who regularly contributes to various magazines and publishers.
