About Us

Artist Migration is an arts production, management and curatorial project providing performance and exhibition opportunities to international artists while focusing on integration and mobility. We operate directly with independent artists bypassing the gatekeeping of large institutions. We consider art an act of resistance to political oppression and are responding to the current political climate of fear and exclusion by enabling and fostering international collaborations. Current projects supported are in visual, literary, sound and performance arts. 

Artist Migration has produced shows in San Fracisco, Oakland, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam and London.

Elektra founded Artist Migration in Paris back in 2008 as a response to witnessing the difficulty artists face in producing and disseminating their art abroad. Social bias of immigrant, poor, or minority artists in foreign countries made it necessary to rely on lenghty and often dead-end grant/residency/embassy or politically sponsored opportunity loops. AM was created as an intercept.

Elektra is a concert pianist by trade and manages the music and overall productions of Artist Migration.

Mauro ffortissimo is an Argentinean-Italian-American artist based in Half Moon Bay California whose work spans music, sculpture, and social practice. A co-founder of Sunset Piano and the celebrated Flower Piano festival at the San Francisco Botanical Garden, he is known for transforming pianos into public art experiences that invite collective participation. For over three decades, Mauro has explored the deconstruction and reconfiguration of pianos as both instruments and sculptural objects, creating the Piano Liberado and other works that challenge the Western twelve-tone tradition. His large-scale public installations, performances, and community projects from San Francisco to Mexico seek to liberate sound, expand visual art, and reimagine the piano’s cultural legacy. Mauro curates the visual/ poetry and general disruptive happenings for AM and donates all the pianos in the different venues.

https://mauroffortissimo.com/

Carrie Pilto is an independent curator  based in Amsterdam, creating meaningful, world-class content for international art museums, book publishers, art galleries, and private industry. 

Carrie curated for Artist Migration back in 2014 and maintains the role of Guardian Angel occasionally sending us some magic to produce. 

Notable recent projects include "Someone is getting rich" at the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam examining the relationship between colonialism and the global financial system, and “Down to Earth” for World Press Photo documenting the effects and futures of climate change.

Sumi Lee aka "Tango Queen of San Francisco" believes in cultural diversity and equal opportunity for all art forms, and has dedicated her life to supporting talented local and visiting guest artists from all around the world to provide local audiences with diverse music programs in high-quality, live performances. She organizes live tango music performances in the Bay Area and manages artist relations for AM, as well as directs operations for Latin America. Sumi is a classically trained concert pianist and the leading tango pianist in San Francisco.