2025 SUMMIT
QUARTER LIFE CRISIS
ART IN A WORLD ON THE BRINK
The Verbier Art Summit is excited to unveil details about its upcoming edition, scheduled for 4 & 5 April 2025 at the W Hotel in Verbier, Switzerland, as well as online via our virtual platform. Philip Tinari, director of the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in China, curated the 2025 Summit theme:
QUARTER LIFE CRISIS
Art in a World on the Brink
“Taking its title from the pop-psychology name for the anxiety of young adulthood coined in the early 2000s, this edition of the Verbier Art Summit will bring together artists and thinkers from across geographies and generations to ask questions about the geopolitical, digital, human and institutional dimensions of the art world in the twenty-first century, to which there are no easy answers”, states Philip.
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PHILIP TINARI
In his curatorial statement, Philip writes that the 2025
Summit edition looks to situate the precarious state of the art world a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, at the intersection of several related vectors: the long slide from a unipolar to a multipolar world, the ongoing digital acceleration, and the articulation and intersection of
complex multiple identities and subjectivities:
“After an extended pandemic hiatus, and in light of myriad reckonings, upheavals, and conflicts, the Verbier Art Summit returns to ask, “How might we understand our collective quarter life crisis? And who might counsel us through this global moment of anxiety?”
Philip reflects on the theme, saying, “Meanwhile, we have watched, posted, and streamed, as digital acceleration has wrought iterative transformation. Successive technologies gave rise to micro-generations, each with its unique affect and subjectivity."
2025 SUMMIT SPEAKERS
As global complexities deepen, the Summit invites artists, thinkers, and innovators from various disciplines to reimagine art’s role in shaping cultural resilience and understanding. Among these speakers are artists Zanele Muholi, Claudia Comte and writer Kyle Chayka.
South African visual activist Zanele Muholi is among the most acclaimed contemporary photographers. Since the early 2000s, Muholi has documented and celebrated Black queer identity and explored the politics of inhabiting a Black body, inspiring reflections on identity and its multiplicities. The renowned Swiss artist Claudia Comte returns to Verbier after her digital participation in 2021. Claudia’s work focuses on the natural world and explores the evolving relationship between the human hand and digital methods, providing a powerful metaphor for broader societal shifts. Delving even deeper into the digital realm, is the American cultural critic and The New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka, who will bring his insights on the impact of platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify on our social ecosystem. Kyle’s recent book, Filterworld (2024), provides a fresh perspective on how algorithms shape public consciousness, transforming our culture both online and in the real world.
2025 PROGRAMME
The 2025 Verbier Art Summit will offer a unique space for artists and cultural leaders to explore, question, and respond to today’s profound shifts. The event includes two days of talks, debates and cultural events, beginning at 9:30 CET on Friday 4 April, and concluding at 18:00 CET on Saturday 5 April. The Talks programme will present the ideas of the Summit’s speakers via 20-minutes presentations, with free public access for all interested, both in-person in Verbier as well as online. In addition, cultural activities can be experienced all around Verbier, providing both a local as well as an international insight into the art world. Alongside, the Summit organises a Debating programme, by invitation only, which aims to generate innovative ideas that will drive social change.
As the Summit aims to inspire people globally, the conversation will continue through the Summit publication series designed by Irma Boom and made available in art museum shops via Koenig Books.
Public registration for the 2025 Summit will open in January 2025. Art enthusiasts, artists, curators and other cultural professionals will be welcomed to secure their spot for what promises to be an insightful weekend of dialogue and discovery. Invitations to the Debating programme will go out before the end of the year.
To learn more about the upcoming Summit, please join Philip Tinari and Summit Founder, Anneliek Sijbrandij, at a conversation during Art Genève on 30 January 2025 at 15:00 CET. This session will be an opportunity to meet Philip and delve into the key questions the 2025 Summit will address, setting the stage for April.
ABOUT PHILIP TINARI
Philip Tinari is Director and Chief Executive of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China. Since 2011, he has led its transformation from a founder-driven private museum into China’s leading independent contemporary art institution, presenting a wide range of exhibitions and programs to more than one million annual visitors across four venues in Beijing, Shanghai, Beidaihe and Yixing. His award-winning program has included more than 120 exhibitions of artists ranging from Cao Fei and Xu Bing to Rauschenberg and Picasso, putting the contemporary art of China into global context and vice versa.
Philip is a widely recognised writer and curator. He was co-curator of the 2017 exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Guggenheim Bilbao, and SFMOMA, and curator of the 2016 exhibition Bentu: Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. In 2021 he served as artistic director of Feeling the Stones, the inaugural edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale in Riyadh and then the largest contemporary art exhibition to date in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 2009, he founded the magazine LEAP under the auspices of the Modern Media Group. He has been named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a fellow of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Born near Philadelphia and based in Beijing, Philip speaks near-native Mandarin. He was a Fulbright scholar at Tsinghua University, and holds degrees from Duke and Harvard.
