Under her now four-year guidance, Artissima has become a proper force to be reckoned with among the world’s biggest art fairs. Sarah Cosulich Canarutto is someone with a rich background in curating, which reaches events as big as the Venice Biennale – for the 50th edition, she was the assistant to Director Francesco Bonami. But her achievements do not stop there.

Born in 1974, Sarah Cosulich Canarutto worked as a curator of the Villa Manin Centre for Contemporary Art in Udine, Italy, where she successfully realized over 20 exhibition projects. In 2009, she helped the foundation of Cardi Black Box Milano and worked as the artistic director during the first year of its existence (she was in charge of Carsten Hoeller’s major show there). Currently, and for five years now, she’s been living in Switzerland, working as an art advisor and being in charge of many private collections. She is a contributing editor of many art magazines, a curatorship and museology speaker at many universities in Italy and abroad, and the author of two monographs (on Jeff Koons, 2006 and Gabriel Orozco, 2008).

Since Sarah Cosulich Canarutto became the director of Artissima, the Torino art fair has significantly expanded its program, introducing many novelties never before seen at such artistic event.

One such innovation is Per4M, an entire section dedicated to performance art – something you don’t expect to see at a trading venue. Yet, as long as Sarah Cosulich is Artissima’s guide, we shall expect the unexpected, as everything she did so far has proven to be a rather enormous success.

We talked to Sarah Cosulich Canarutto about what makes Artissima stand out, the art market situation in Italy, this year’s exciting new projects and much more. Scroll down and have a read!