Events — Talk
Artist Anastasia Pavlou and theatre director Fabio Cherstich in Conversation
Saturday 25 Oct 2025
Following her summer residency at Gasworks, London and her solo presentations in Frieze Art Fair, and Hot Wheels, Athens, artist Anastasia Pavlou will be in conversation with theatre director and stage designer Fabio Cherstich. Together, they will draw connections between Anastasia’s research of theatre theory, theatricality, composition and staging as a painter, with Fabio’s work as an experimental theatre and opera director.
Circling diverse fields of theatre, performance, staging, painting and language, the talk will be followed by a Q&A session.
Additional information
Anastasia Pavlou
Anastasia Pavlou (b. 1993, Athens, Greece) lives and works between Athens, Greece, and Basel, Switzerland. Pavlou constructs a visual vocabulary through painting, drawing, and photography, exploring the acts of looking and seeing, and mapping how these processes take shape in images. Her work originates in collage – first as a method of image-making, then as a framework for thinking about images, their relationships, and how they come together in space. For Pavlou, the interaction between her works and their audiences carries a dramatic, event-like quality, marked by continuous re-evaluation as the work evolves. In this process, new images emerge – born from the artwork itself and its encounters.
Pavlou holds a Master’s degree from the Institut Kunst (FHNW) in Basel and a Diploma in Painting from the Athens School of Fine Arts. Recent exhibitions include Sleeper, Balice Hertling, Paris, France; Platform 24, Kunstmuseum Appenzell, Switzerland (both 2024); Reader, Hot Wheels, Athens, Greece; Concerto Finale, Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland; New Greek Painting, Municipal Gallery of Athens, Greece (all 2023); We Are So Many Here, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2022); Atmosphere, Eptanisou 44, Athens, Greece (2021); and The Same River Twice, The Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece (2019).
Fabio Cherstich
Fabio Cherstich (b. 1984, Udine) is an Italian opera and theatre director, set designer, and curator whose work bridges the worlds of performing arts, visual culture, and contemporary design. Known for his bold visual language and conceptual precision, Cherstich’s practice combines classical dramaturgy with experimental formats, engaging new media, site-specificity, and a distinctly contemporary aesthetic.
Over the years, he has directed productions across major Italian and international institutions, including the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Opéra d’Avignon, Opéra de Marseille, Théâtre Maillon de Strasbourg, Teatro Argentina in Rome, and iTeatri di Reggio Emilia. His work has featured at prominent festivals such as the Festival d’Avignon, Napoli Teatro Festival, Festival Premières Strasbourg, STUK Festival in Leuven, and the Venice Biennale Teatro, where he was invited as both director and scenographer.
He is the creator and director of Operacamion, a mobile opera initiative developed with Teatro dell’Opera di Roma that reimagines canonical operas for non-traditional spaces. Described by The New York Times as “a unique project capable of returning opera to its origins”, Operacamion brought opera to urban peripheries, town squares, and construction sites, reaching new and diverse audiences across Italy.
Cherstich’s visual sensibility extends into the worlds of fashion, art direction, and contemporary design. He has conceived performative events and site-specific projects for brands such as Cassina, Memphis Milano, Gufram, Fay, Hermès, Off-White, Miu Miu, Acne Studios, and Prada. He has collaborated with artists including Goshka Macuga and Helen Marten, integrating performance into installations and exhibitions that dissolve the boundary between stage and gallery.
Since 2019, Cherstich has served as curator and archivist of the Larry Stanton Estate in New York City, overseeing exhibitions, publications, and film projects dedicated to the queer artist’s legacy. His broader research focuses on the underground New York art scene of the 1980s and 1990s, particularly through the lens of overlooked or marginalised figures.
He teaches Aesthetics of Theatrical Direction at the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi and at IULM University in Milan, where his pedagogical approach merges historical inquiry with contemporary performance practices.
His most recent project, Visual Diary, is a multimedia performance exploring queer memory and archival desire. It premiered at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York and will tour internationally, including venues such as Triennale Milano, Kunsthalle Basel, and ICA London.