Rome, National Roman Museum hosts Elisabetta Benassi's Empire exhibition

From June 21 to September 1, 2019, the Museo Nazionale Romano - Palazzo Altemps will host the second stage of Elisabetta Benassi’s project, EMPIRE, winner of the third edition of the Italian Council (2018) call for proposals, a competition devised by the General Directorate for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP) of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities to promote Italian contemporary art in the world. The EMPIRE project is promoted by the National Roman Museum in collaboration with the Pontifical Academy of the Virtuous at the Pantheon.

The EMPIRE project takes the basic building element of ancient architecture, the Roman brick, and transforms it into an autonomous signifying element, constituting a site-specific installation of six thousand terracotta bricks embossed with the inscription that gives the work its name.

The term “empire,” in its various and contrasting meanings, kindles figures of power and grandeur in the collective imagination, while evoking dark scenarios of coercion, domination and subjugation. Placing herself at the junction between historical processes and memory, between symbolic and political values, between verbal language and visual experience, Elisabetta Benassi returns to reflect with this project on the dialectical relationship between yesterday and today. As a kind of device that produces unexpected configurations, the work aims to challenge the idea of an Antiquity now considered as a given and to return it instead as a conflicting interweave, a point of resistance to the presumed inevitability of the present.

After theItalian Cultural Institute in London, the first stop on the itinerary, EMPIRE will be hosted in the courtyard of the National Roman Museum Palazzo Altemps. The work will continue its exhibition path at Mostyn Contemporary Art Gallery(Wales) and will finally find its final home at Museo Nazionale Romano di Crypta Balbi in Rome, at the same time as the documentary exhibition at the headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of the Virtuous at the Pantheon.

Elisabetta Benassi’s EMPIRE project was realized thanks to the support of Italian Council Direzione Generale Arte e Architettura Contemporanee e Periferie Urbane (DGAAP) of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, headed by Federica Galloni.

It is promoted by the National Roman Museum in collaboration with the Pontifical Academy of the Virtuous at the Pantheon, partners the Italian Cultural Institute in London and Mostyn Contemporary Art Gallery, Llandudno (Wales).

For all information you can visit the official website of the National Roman Museum.

Pictured: Elisabetta Benassi, Empire (2018-2019)

Rome, National Roman Museum hosts Elisabetta Benassi's Empire exhibition

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