"With our project we open art to millennials." Onstream Gallery founders speak

Eleonora Rebiscini and Chiara Gesualdo are the creators of one of Italy´s youngest and most innovative online galleries, Onstream Gallery, born shortly after the lockdown on July 1, 2020. Both very young (they are just 28 years old), they count together almost twelve thousand followers on IG and have combined their university studies and their knowledge of art history and digital marketing to create a gallery out of the box in the contemporary art market, aimed at a much wider audience than usual. Onstream Gallery is an excellent example among those who are little by little trying to establish themselves in the digital world, and for this reason we asked them to tell us who the two founders of the project are, how their gallery was born and the future of art in digital. Interview by Francesca Della Ventura.

Chiara Gesualdo and Eleonora Rebiscini

FDV. Eleonora, Chiara, thank you for agreeing to take part in this interview. I was particularly impressed by your project and the motivation and creativity with which you carry it out. Definitely a very positive example for the many young people in cultural heritage who struggle to find a job in the field. How do you come at 28 years old to set up an online gallery, at a time of crisis (also of change) for the contemporary art market post lockdown and still in the midst of a pandemic? What prompted you to do this?

ER. This is a good question, because many people have pointed it out to me, but I don’t really have an answer. I think Onstream Gallery is, as far as I’m concerned, the culmination of a path of work and studies in different fields: my experiences in the cultural sector and in the Digital Marketing sector made me realize that I didn’t want to give up either one, I loved them both very much. Initially I thought the only path would be as a Social Media Manager in Museums, then I realized it would be just the tip of the iceberg. Meeting Chiara in London turned on that light bulb for me so I thought I could really put together everything I had been doing up to that point: curating, social media, educational mediation, press office, artist relations.
Pandemic didn’t affect the project in the strict sense, because we were going to do what everybody saw from July 1 onward anyway. It definitely affected people’s perception of Onstream Gallery, who now have a completely different attitude toward online projects. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; everything has its negative and positive aspects.

CG. Onstream Gallery was born almost a year ago, it was October 2019 when I started having the idea of setting up my own gallery. My experience both at university and at work in London had confirmed to me that yes, online could be seen as a tool to break down the barriers of art elitism and that yes, it could bring an ever-widening audience closer to this seemingly closed world. That’s how you arrive at 28 years old with an awareness of what’s wrong and the right desire and motivation to commit to doing something to change things.

FDV. I think it would be interesting for our readers to get to know you better, to know what studies you have done and, more importantly, how you met. What has been your experience in the field of (non-digital) art?

ER. As far as I am concerned, I have always tried to do as many things as possible since my three-year degree: I was a curatorial assistant at MAXXI in Rome in 2015, I did two internships at MACRO, I also studied at Tor Vergata in the Faculty of Economics in relation to the Creative Enterprises sector. After my master’s degree, I decided to devote a year to a Master’s degree in Art and Cultural Heritage Economics: at that juncture I realized that I had already gained a lot of skills in the field, however I was completely unaware of all the jobs that can be done in our field. I vaguely associated the art market with auction houses, in reality I discovered that galleries, art advisors, banks with their private collections, insurance companies, and so much more are part of this world. This was the key through which I finally understood that I didn’t have to give up one thing to do another: I could combine Art and Digital Marketing to work within the Marketplace.

CG. I spent the last four years in London, first to study and then to work. I had always had the idea of spending a few years abroad, and after graduation I decided to move to London. Here I got to know and learn more about the world of the online marketplace (which has taken off there for almost 8 years already), I got hooked on it right away. As mentioned before, what I liked even more was to see the positive response from the public. i saw that online was an effective tool to bring art (especially contemporary and emerging art) closer to a wider and wider audience. University in England was crucial for me. I was a postgraduate at the University of Westminster in London where I did an MA in Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture. My dissertation was on digital communication and the importance of using digital platforms in the context of audience engagement. My academic journey made me realize several things that undoubtedly had a major influence on the career choice I made: for example, there is no harm in considering ’art a business and applying marketing rules to art. It can be done! It is important to know how to “listen” to one’s audience. Finally, it opened my eyes to professional outlets in the art world, namely that working in art does not only mean traditional museum or gallery, but there are so many other alternatives, such as having a startup. During college, I had some important work experience as a Gallery Assistant and Assistant Curator. The galleries I worked with were dealing with commercial art and emerging artists and were already collaborating with digital realities (e.g. in artwork authentication, digital artwork certification). I always had, however, the desire to do something of my own, in my own country. I met Eleonora through Instagram and we met at an opening in Rome last summer. At Talking Galleries in Barcelona last January, (whose theme was the importance of digital in the art system) I tell her about Onstream Gallery and the online gallery. She, of course, immediately espouses the idea and from there we start working together.

FDV. What do you think about the Italian contemporary art market and the gallery system in Italy? Reading what you have sent me, it seems that you define it as elitist and that somehow you want to make a change in the Italian gallery scene...

ER. Before I met Chiara I used to read a lot about the art market in Italy, but I used to shoot very little. I think this is a very Italian thing: breaking one’s back on books without really going and touching what one then studies. There is a lot of talk in Germany and the U.K. about how galleries necessarily need to open up to millennials by changing their modus operandi: starting from transparent display of prices to the availability of doing transactions online. We don’t want to make a change in the Italian gallery scene, we simply want to cover a target audience that has never entered a gallery, but may find that they are particularly fascinated by an emerging artist, without necessarily having to go through Amazon to buy a print.

CG. More than change, I would say we want to present an alternative. We don’t want to be the best version of a gallery, we are something different that offers a different experience. I think the time has come for the Italian contemporary art system and the gallery system to open up to the new frontiers that digital has to offer them. I think the time has come to open up to a new generation of collectors.

FDV. How many artists are you already representing? How have you chosen them? How did you propose your gallery to these artists and what was the response from them? Has there been anyone who has declined to an application from you? What have you been told?

ER. We are representing four artists, and speaking for my area of expertise, I am very happy that they were never prejudiced against the project, on the contrary, they jumped right in with us. They immediately believed in the fact that social media, especially Instagram, is crucial for us for two reasons: to convey their artistic research in the best way possible and to sell. We are still a gallery, and the fact that we explicitly say that those works they created are for sale is something you don’t see a lot on gallery Instagram channels, at least in Italy. We, for one, have the shop on Instagram and Facebook, available for everyone. It was not a given that they would accept this right away.

CG.We choose artists who have something to say. Originality, quality of work and commitment are what we look for in the artists we collaborate with.

FDV. Effectively, one could argue that the digital world, while of great help, does not fully meet the collector’s (whatever they may be) need to see a work of art live. What are your thoughts on this and how are you addressing this what might be an obstacle but, in more general terms, the new challenge of art in the “age of its digital reproducibility,” as Walter Benjamin would have put it?

ER. I am very glad that you quoted Walter Benjamin. When I read him in college I immediately compared him to the advent of the digital. In our work this is an objection we receive practically every day, but I want to make one thing clear right away: we absolutely do not think that our project is better than the offline ones. On the contrary, it is designed precisely for those who would never enter a physical gallery regardless. In this sense, we have two audiences, art lovers, who have naturally arrived on Instagram, and those outside the industry. The second one is obviously more difficult to reach, but we are working on it through blogs and very thorough SEO work.

CG. As I said before, online galleries are not to be considered the best version of a gallery. It is very true, the collector’s need to see the artwork remains, that is why the buyer who buys online always has 14 days right of withdrawal. It is also true that there are other needs of the collector that the digital world is able to satisfy: the ease of finding information about the artist and the works on display, transparency in terms of prices and availability, and the ability to view a gallery catalog online. These are the needs of a collector (whatever that may be) that we want to satisfy.

FDV.: You mentioned that your project targets art lovers (not only). Who are the art lovers? And why, in your opinion, does the vast majority of the Italian public have such a difficult time getting in touch with galleries, museums, and cultural institutions in general? Is this a trend that, in your opinion, by modernizing the current art system a bit, and using digital, is it possible to change? Or, more in the case of galleries, is it an issue entirely attributable to the price boom that discourages the user from entering and making contact with the works?

ER. Art lovers are what are defined in our communication campaigns as the target audience that already knows the cultural subject matter and moves easily between museums and galleries. Many art lovers follow Onstream Gallery, despite the fact that at first we thought we were talking to someone who visits at most two exhibitions a year. Actually, Chiara and I are art lovers, and it came naturally to us to speak to them as well. However, we did not forget the millennials, the real target audience of the project. Why don’t millennials go to the museum? Because, in my humble opinion, no one tells them in the appropriate way. I read a lot of texts, captions, posters on the street and press releases designed for experts in the field: there is no cultural offer that speaks to all target audiences, there is a cultural offer that speaks to a few, the art lovers. Obviously with Onstream Gallery we are trying to reverse this trend: it is very difficult of course, certainly very ambitious, but if we who are young and use digital every day don’t do it, who else should?

CG. Onstream Gallery speaks not only to the audience of art lovers. Onstream Gallery also speaks to all those who have never set foot in an art gallery for fear of not measuring up. We are here to welcome them to the art world, and we believe that the Web in this can be our best ally.

FDV. What are your current projects? Would you like to introduce us to the next exhibition that will be on Onstream Gallery?

CG. Onstream Gallery was born with the idea of bringing as many people as possible closer to the art world. Are We All Connected is an example of how we want to and are trying to do that. It is a participatory exhibition that calls people to become co-creators. Hence the idea of overcoming even the passive role of the audience and giving them an active role. Bruno Cerasi is the artist with whom we decided to do all this together. His artistic research underwent a profound change in 2009 after a brain stroke that led him to readjust his practice as well. From there he began to investigate the invisible connections between people, and his artistic research was delineated around the concepts of participation, inclusion, and the importance of places (Bruno in the past has also made site-specific installations that could be enjoyed in a limited period of time). For the second exhibition, we wanted to make something that would put the focus on the concept of online versus offline worlds, to show that these two worlds are not so much opposites and, above all, that something interesting can come out of their dialogue and interconnection. In short, we wanted to send a message. From these assumptions that the idea of the hybrid exhibition was born: Are We All Connected, the online exhibition that is realized offline. In the real world, people participate by sharing their special places with us, and this feeds into the virtual world map, which can be seen on the gallery website. People then participate in the making of the exhibition itself, but at the same time they are doing something more. In fact, the artist will start from these points to create a work of art: a geographic constellation born from the connection of all people’s special places. And that is how Are we all connected is proposed as that space where real and virtual meet creating a symbiotic universe. I think at a time like this, after months in which we have witnessed a boom of “online exhibitions,” “digital experiences,” Are We All Connected can show that virtual and real can coexist and dialogue with each other.

FDV. How do you see, indeed how do you hope for the future of Onstream Gallery? And most importantly, what are the potentials of digital for you? I, for example, believe as you do that digital serves to break down many barriers, including class barriers (elitist art, as you call it) and gender barriers (thanks to the work of influencers and Instagram, in digital I am able to feel gender differences less). Do you agree with that?

ER. The future of Onstream Gallery is online, with offline events scattered around Italy and Europe. Social media allows you to meet people anywhere and have relationships with whomever you want: we really believe in solidifying live relationships, and we will definitely do that in happier times than this. Gender equality is an issue that is very close to my heart, which I try to address on instagram in a spontaneous way, bringing my own reasons. Although art history faculties are composed in the majority of women, it is not uncommon to find men at the top in various fields. This trend is reversing somewhat in recent years, and I think it is also due to the work of great female professionals who are leveraging their voices on social media. Digital is very democratic in this, and I personally, working online all the time, have never had a problem with discrimination due to my gender. But a woman who doesn’t make the same choice as me is still at a disadvantage, just think of all the talk related to pregnancy.

CG. I agree with Eleonora about the future of Onstream Gallery, online but with pop-up events. I am also convinced that online is an effective tool to bring art closer to a wider audience and thus break down the physical and psychological barriers that hold people back from approaching art. Onstream wants to welcome these people.

FDV. What would you recommend to people who are beginning their studies in art history and have just graduated?

ER. I always recommend having a foundation in communication and experimenting on one’s social channels. Today, communicating yourself on your Instagram account is an important asset that allows you to be more competitive in the job market. Many young people are put into social media management as soon as they enter internships: you might as well start practicing right away.

CG. The advice I give to students is to get informed and educated outside of their studies as well. Today we have so many opportunities available to us it is up to us to decide to take advantage of them or not in our professional growth. As mentioned before, working in art does not only mean traditional museum or gallery, but there are so many other alternatives, such as having a startup. So, be creative!

FDV. What about artists? Would you recommend focusing a little more on digital marketing?

ER. I’ve always advised it: gallery owners are looking for artists on instagram now. Might as well start rolling up their sleeves!

CG. I advise artists to grow and mature artistically, to experiment. Seek contact with other artists and contaminate yourself! Cultural exchange is the basis of any growth, Instagram is definitely key. I recommend digital marketing more to galleries!

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.