At the MAR in Ravenna, a space to experiment: the new Arts & New Media Room with the SPAZIO NEUTRO project

The MAR - Art Museum of the City of Ravenna took a step toward the future with the inauguration of the Arts & New Media Room, a space dedicated to artistic and technological experimentation. With the inaugural SPAZIO NEUTRO project, the museum expands its mission, creating a meeting environment for creativity, innovation and participation. First up is Vava inoltre una segreta felicità, an immersive, site-specific work by artist Diego Miguel Mirabella (Enna, 1988).

The Arts & New Media Room is conceived as a hybrid place where the exhibition and workshop functions are intertwined. Designed to host environmental installations, performances, workshops and art residencies, it represents MAR’s most innovative soul. SPAZIO NEUTRO, conceived by Giorgia Salerno, the museum’s curator and conservator, aims to rethink the relationship between the public and works of art, breaking down the distance and constraints of traditional museum fruition. The goal is to create a more direct and participatory relationship, addressing issues central to contemporary museums: the decolonization of collections, the relational museum and the potential of generative artificial intelligences. The activation of the Arts & New Media Room was made possible thanks to resources from the Digital Unite digital inclusion project, financed with PR FESR-Regione Emilia-Romagna 2021/27 funds, and the VALUE PLUS project, financed under the European program Interreg Italy - Croatia 2021/27.

Diego Miguel Mirabella: between ornate and narrative

The first exhibition in the Arts & New Media Room bears the signature of Diego Miguel Mirabella, an artist known for his multidisciplinary approach that combines painting, sculpture and decoration. In Vestiva inoltre una segreta felicità, Mirabella transforms the entire space into an enveloping work, where ornaments inspired by the Ravenna mosaic tradition intertwine with personal visual memories and references to Eastern and Western cultures.

Mirabella moves on different cultural registers, from the West to the East, and, ranging from painting to sculpture, he uses ornamental decoration as a true visual language, which sometimes intertwines with words in order to tell stories that, on this occasion, lead the viewer into an almost dreamlike dimension, in which the elements are concealed or show themselves to the viewer.

The pigments applied on the walls blend with the mosaic dust, creating a visual narrative that envelops the viewer and invites him or her to become an integral part of the work.Lighting, both natural and artificial, plays a key role: during the day, the windows reflect the light, integrating it into the ornament, while at night, external light creates overlays that amplify the dreamlike dimension of the installation. Mirabella thus invites the audience to experience the work in an unconventional way, by sitting, lying down or choosing any position that encourages total immersion in the artistic experience.

SPAZIO NEUTRO: a museum that changes perspective

The SPAZIO NEUTRO project was created to overturn traditional principles of museum fruition. The canonical approach, which requires distance and composure, is replaced here by a freer and more engaging interaction. Topics on the agenda include experimentation with artificial intelligences, decolonization of visual languages and dialogue between tradition and innovation. The Arts & New Media Room thus confirms itself as a place of discovery, encounter and experimentation, capable of stimulating critical thinking and offering new keys to understanding our time.

“The Arts & New Media Room,” explains Roberto Cantagalli, director of MAR, “will host Spazio Neutro, an exhibition path curated directly by the museum and at the same time will be the point of contact with the effervescent creativity that gravitates around MAR, which will thus find new spaces and new opportunities. Thus, the journey to make MAR increasingly open, connected and accessible continues. A platform of sociality, attentive to the well-being of citizens, which makes relationships and innovation its hallmark.”

“With the Spazio Neutro project,” explains Fabio Sbaraglia, deputy mayor and councillor for culture, “we are inaugurating a new place and a new function with which the MAR is enriched. A Project Room designed, as is the case in many European museums and around the world, to expand the museum’s possibilities to host and support projects by artists: a space where fruition itself can be imagined in new and experimental ways. A further step in opening the museum to the city and to the contemporary.”

At the MAR in Ravenna, a space to experiment: the new Arts & New Media Room with the SPAZIO NEUTRO project

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