Blog 29 - April 2024
Is visiting Rome only a box-ticking, selfie-taking exercise?
Everyone should, at some point in their lives, be shouted at by a Vatican security guard or bothered by a middle-aged Italian man dressed like a fake centurion. (I can tick both of them from my recent trip and add few more ticks to the "bucket list", including a cappuccino for 10 euros by the Trevi Fountain, and over an hour waiting queue to get into Basilica)
I believe there is a lot more to the grand city than its ancient ruins and Renaissance sculptures, including MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Art and National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, which i have found especially helpful for my personal exploration as an artist.
The current exhibition Time is Out of Joint in the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art investigates the notion of time in its fluidity, non-linearity, and stratification. I felt that gallery rooms were filled with conversation between the past, present and future, not just between the viewers, but the artworks themselves.
Piet Mondrian, Vasilij Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, Pino Pascali, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Mario Ceroli and many more artists from fragmented time together seems to embody art historian Hans Belting’s dilemma “the end of the history of art, or art’s freedom".
One of my favourite things about the MAXXI museum was the exhibition by Jannis Kounellis, which is presently on display in gallery 5 on the top level. The glass collection that faces the window, the live piano performance playing in the background, and the large letter posts that fill the entire room all explore Jannis Kounelli's study, highlighting the close relationship between theatre and performative activities.
If you look at Rome from a different angle, it's more than just a place to tick boxes and take selfies. Rome is an artwork that allows you to enter it from many directions and emerge with variety of perspectives.
