Alice Pasquini interprets memory: "Vestige" on display at Primoli Foundation

From January 23 to February 14, 2025, the Primoli Foundation in Rome is hosting Vestige, the new solo project of artist Alice Pasquini. The exhibition, which takes the form of an unprecedented visual narrative, interweaves the historical memory preserved inPrimoli’s photographic archive with the artist’s contemporary sensibility, creating an emotional and reflective journey.

Alice Pasquini confronts herself this time with a cultural legacy of extraordinary value. Inspired by a selection of photographs taken by Giuseppe Primoli and preserved in the Foundation’s archive, the artist evokes an aristocratic world made of contrasts: splendor and decadence, beauty and decay, memory and oblivion.

A dialogue between past and present

The exhibition was created as a dialogue between eras, a visual bridge connecting nineteenth-century Rome to the contemporary city. Archival photographs, precious documents of a bygone era, are transformed through the intervention of the artist, who reworks their meaning through visual collages and works on fabric.

Starting with female portraits imprinted on glass by Giuseppe Primoli, Alice Pasquini gives new life to enigmatic and elegant figures. These faces, charged with melancholy and charm, embody the aristocratic Rome of yesteryear, with its sumptuous gowns and looks veiled in mystery. Through his art, Pasquini transforms them into contemporary relics, symbols of a fragile but persistent memory that continues to speak to us despite the passage of time.

The works in the exhibition

A central element of the exhibition are the works on fabric, which the artist created inspired by archival images. These works, displayed in the Primoli Foundation library, take the form of banners floating in space like phantasmagoria. Through a play of layering and transparency, the works evoke the complexity of memory: traces of the past intertwine with the present, creating a visual narrative that invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between what remains and what changes.

The textiles, delicate and vibrant, become symbolic mediums, capable of transforming the library into a place of active memory. Here, nineteenth-century Rome is reflected in today’s metropolis, offering an immersive experience that leads the visitor to question the meaning of vestiges: those fragments of the past that, despite the passage of time, retain the power to speak to the present.

Memory as a central theme

Vestige is not only a tribute to the ephemeral beauty of the past, but also a reflection on the passing of time and the traces it leaves behind. Through visual collages that mix faces, words and urban glimpses, Alice Pasquini explores the elusive nature of memory, questioning what really remains of an era that seems long gone.

In particular, the works evoke images of a different Rome, still without the banks of the Tiber, when flooding was an integral part of city life. This contrast between the city of yesterday and that of today, between memory and oblivion, gives the works a suspended aura, capable of fascinating and moving at the same time.

The choice of the Primoli Foundation as the venue for Vestige is not accidental. Primoli’s photographic archive represents a unique testimony of a past that continues to live on through its images. Giuseppe Primoli, a 19th-century photographer and intellectual, documented the life of aristocratic Rome with an attentive and sensitive gaze, leaving a heritage of extraordinary historical and cultural value. Alice Pasquini, with her visual language, reinterprets this heritage, transforming it into something alive and contemporary. Her works do not simply reproduce archival images, but rework them in a poetic key, offering a new perspective on memory and the beauty that resides in decay.

Through his work, the artist reminds us that memory is never static, but in constant transformation. The vestiges of the past, though fragmentary, still have much to tell us, inviting us to reflect on the mystery of time and the beauty that resides in the traces it leaves behind.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Primoli Foundation.

Alice Pasquini interprets memory: "Vestige" on display at Primoli Foundation

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