Monthly Dispatch
Monatsbrief der VILLA ROMANA – September 2023

September came as a storm, suddenly knocking at the door without being expected. The summer was timeless and hot, and the trepidation to come back to more usual rhythms of the year was probably not a shared feeling in the house. The fellows spent very focused first days and weeks of the month in their studios, working hard on the pieces to present for the long-waited appointment of the Open Studios. All four have been balancing energies to juggle their busy schedule, with a calendar of exhibitions, workshops, and lecture performances across Europe and beyond. Their commitment has been extremely generous and meaningful. The feeling of having a full house pulsing with all artists and their creative forces in action was truly special and newly found. This year has been one of infrastructural reflection and of transition, with the past months having functioned as a moment of grounding a different way of doing things and of relating to each other. The possibility of finally bringing together all the extensive labour of the team, the research and work of the artists, the dedication of the collaborators of Villa Romana, - the very possibility of seeing it materialised in a multiform and surprising exhibition - lit up our spirits with joy and bliss.

Once we released the energies and the pressure of the open studios and its programme with many performances and events, on 18 September we had the pleasure to celebrate another opening, the magnificent Room with A View. Aby Warburg, Florence and the Laboratory of Images, curated by our long-term collaborator, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (KHI), with the Warburg Institute at the Gallerie degli Uffizi. An historical show not only pondering the work of the art historian Aby Warburg in Florence and its legacy, but also able to bring into an excellent and unique conversation old masters and contemporary artists, like our former Villa Romana 2020 guest artist Malgorzata Mirga-Tas – who chose to be in dialogue with Gentile da Fabriano.

From the first day of the month until the last day, 30 September, artist Erik Tollas lived with us in the Villa. He was with us for a month as a ERIAC resident, continuing a collaboration between Villa Romana and the European Roma Institute for Art and Culture established from 2020 and advancing with reciprocal enthusiasm. His presence was gentle and generous, very respectful of the rhythms and life in the Villa, discreet but meaningful: Erik adopted the counter of our garden bar as a studio, where he uninterruptedly worked, cutting wood, experimenting with shapes and colours, while getting inspiration from the olive-wood, the plants and the beings active in the garden. He created three new works, which are presented in our current exhibition, and a fourth one done in collaboration with his wife, artist Nagy Zsófia Magdolna, who was here for the very first and very last days of his stay.

Many other artists stayed with us in the last weeks, participating in the preparations, the inauguration, and the unfolding of our programme for the Open Studios and the newly opened exhibition, a house is a house is a home (running until 19 November 2023). Zara Julius, artist, vinyl selector and founder of Pan-African creative research and cultural storytelling agency KONJO, stayed a few days at the Villa with the prospect of presenting a lecture performance, which we hope to host in the future.Emeka Ogboh spent some intense and very busy days with us, finalising the production of the Italian edition of his piece This Too Shall Pass/Tutto Passa, presented at the Piazzale degli Uffizi in the context of our Open Studios, and collaborating with our fellow Samuel Baah Kortey for the convivial happening of Florence Na So So Enjoyment, with food and music in the garden of Villa Romana. Aline Benecke joined us for two days, celebrating with us the opening of a house is a house is a home, where her work around the life of Fasia Jansen is featured: for the occasion, Fide Dayo, founder and director of ADCF, opened his studio at Villa Romana to record a layered interview with Aline around issues of solidarity and of feminist struggles that you can watch here, in three parts: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5nM11_5bYrw&feature=shared; https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVYVbflejds&feature=shared; https://youtube.com/watch?v=FuWqhM7zfIU&feature=shared.

We were also blessed by the presence of Stephany Nwobodo, who came for the opening with a wonderful group of friends and people, and who somehow officially activated her newly commissioned painting Genesis, a piece that we chose to install in the atrium of the Villa, to give inspiration and protection especially to the visitors and the inhabitants of the house. Members of Archive Ensemble not only joined us and cheered with us, but came to offer incredible support and sisters’ solidarity, installing their Haptic Library which generously dispenses a reflected selection of books and authors, a few gems which will keep us busy with reading and sensing for the next months.

Artist Ivana Franke arrived in Florence the week after our opening, when the energy in the house was slower and calmer; as we conceived, the exhibition keeps growing and transforming in its course as a living organism, and her piece morphed into an experiment, keeping us focused in producing visual echoes (of light) from the highest terrace of Villa Romana. More soon ☺

Other very special people came to see us briefly, staying with us in the house and filling up the space with wonderful energy and kindness: among them artist Antje Majewski, curator and critic Övül Durmuşoğlu, and managing director of Villa Aurora Jakob Scherer.

There is no home without people, and all living beings. We owe so much of the success of the inauguration and the beautiful climate of these past weeks to all those who helped and are helping us to make the house a home! Again, we give thanks to the fellows and their hard work and resilience, to the inhabitants of Villa Romana for their passion, space-making, and dedication behind the scenes, to all the collaborators for their force and empathy, and to all the participating artists for their beautiful work and presence!

Come and visit the show, which is open every week from Wednesday to Friday from 2pm to 7pm, and on appointment.

On the occasion of the Florence Art Week, this weekend we have cooked a full programme for you, come and be with us!

Image credit: Daniela Zambrano Almidón

SAVE THE DATE: OCTOBER!

a house is a house is a home: garden and archive weekend on the occasion of Florence Art Week 2023

As the seasons shift and we move into the darker winter months, we invite you to the Villa Romana garden for a harvest gathering that celebrates collaborative cultivation. Join us to eat together, for workshops and performative presentations. The weekend is centred around artworks by Daniela Zambrano Almidón and Leone Contini as well as a collaborative seed garden, all of which have grown in the garden since spring, bringing together explorations of human-plant kinship and diasporic belonging.

We are also celebrating the inspiration that the archive is constantly giving us: art historian Carlotta Castellani will help us navigate the different époques and times of Villa Romana through the photographic and written documentation preserved here.

Saturday 7 October 2023 (as part of Florence Art Week 2023)

10:00 - 13:00, 15:00 - 18:00 Guided tour of the archive with art historian Carlotta Castellani (write to office@villaromana.org to book a slot)

13:00 - 15:00 Seed Bunch, seed exchange and seed vessel-making workshop

17:00 Orto Continuo presentation and performance by Leone Contini

Sunday 8 October 2023 (as part of Florence Art Week 2023)

13:00 Pachamanca / Cosmic Pot: Andean Community Food Action by Daniela Zambrano Almidón

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION

Open Archive, guided tours, Saturday 10:00-13:00/15:00-18:00

Some of the archive's photographic and written materials will be presented to navigate and review the history of this artists’ house since its foundation in 1905 (artists, guests, life in the villa) while introducing at the same time the ongoing digitisation project. The missing parts of the archive will also be brought into focus, especially from the period of the Second World War, not yet much studied areas from which we would like to start again in order to reflect further on the history of the institution and its archive.

Seed Bunch workshop, Saturday 13:00-15:00

Seed Bunch is a seed-centred garden and performative seed library, growing in the garden of Villa Romana. It is an attuning to vegetal agency, freedom, entanglement and co-cultivation. Join us for an experimental seed harvesting session where we will explore the stories attached to some of the garden’s seeds. We will make clay vessels for the storage of seeds through the winter months and use ash to protect the seeds. The seed garden has been imagined with Monai de Paula Atunes and developed with Leone Contini, grown from the generous seed donations of artists and friends. Seed Bunch is deeply informed by artist Zayaan Khan’s work on moving from seed-as-object to seed-as-relation. Open for all ages.

Orto Continuo Leone Contini, Saturday 18:00  

Orto Continuo creates a space for creative cohabitation of the histories and movements of plants and their custodians. Responding to the evictions of Chinese migrant farming communities from their farms in Prato, Orto Continuo brings together plants from these farms that were forcibly abandoned, or that are in the constant danger of being confiscated, in order to unveil the demagogic circle of institutional/media violence that informs such practice.

These evictions take place in the local area where Leone lives. Orto Continuo thus carries a responsibility to respond and make visible to the destruction of this form of self-subsistence farming that is able to feed the local community and therefore substainable. This ‘continuing’ garden asks how authorities and media other the cultivation practices of migrant communities through discourses around invasive species. Above all, the garden is a reflection on the practices of resistance that happen despite the evictions, on gardens that are destroyed only to reappear elsewhere, evading capture.

Join us for a meal and open conversation at Orto Continuo, reflecting on the treatment of migrant farming communities and the movements of plants.

This project is a part of Semenzaio, a research project supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council programme (2023).

Pachamanca / A Cosmic Pot: Andean Community Food Action by Daniela Zambrano Almidón, Sunday 13:00 onwards

Pachamanca means ‘a cosmic pot’ in Quechuan, it is at once sustenance, celebration and collective ritual. Cooked underground and with hot stones a range of ingredients originating in the Andes are cooked together. Artist Daniela Zambrano Almidón works with the deep and vital connection to the Land and connection to the rhythm of the earth in Quechua culture.

In spring this year Daniela planted indigenous varieties of maize, sweet potato and chili in the garden of Villa Romana. Pachamanca / A Cosmic Pot will create a moment of sharing food and rebuilding memory for Andean diasporic communities in the context of displacement. Based on the Quechuan concept of Ayni as a practice of reciprocity and interconnection Pachamanca / A Cosmic Pot celebrates a moment of connection with the land for migrant families.  

The pachamanca is a celebration that takes place during harvest time. Respecting the rhythm of the land, and with the hope of harvesting the migrant species planted in Villa Romana, the Andean community is invited to participate in this celebration that connects our roots to the land, our histories and identities. This celebration of cosmos, flavours and memories is also a recognition of the migration of food of Andean origin. We are able to share these foods in gratitude to the ancestral knowledge that indigenous communities in the Andes and in their diasporas – such as in Florence – keep in practice, or in memory, and that are indispensable to safeguard life. This cosmic pot is the living recipe that closes this agricultural year and opens a path to the rest of the earth.

Click here to read the past dispaches.
 

The Villa Romana e.V. maintains the Villa Romana and the Villa Romana Prize.
The main sponsor is the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Other sponsors are the Deutsche Bank Foundation, the BAO Foundation as well as - project related - numerous private individuals, companies and foundations from all over the world.

Villa Romana e.V. is supported by: