Artists: Eva Maleen Deckner, Negin Fallah, Chantal Spapens, Tanek, Olympia, and Vittorio Venturoli.
Opening: October 21, 2024 at 18.00
Performance by Olympia at 19.30
Curated by: Aida Özcan, Victoria Rose Froberg
Casa delle Cultura de Municipo V — Villa de Santis, 665, Via Casilina 00177 Roma.
The exhibition is open to the public until 23 October, 2024.
Nowhere, Now Here is an exhibition showcasing the diversity of experiences within the LGBTQIA+ community, while engaging the viewer’s imagination towards the future. Incorporating works from a variety of mediums including sculpture, installation, painting, performance, and illustration, bringing focus to how queer bodies renegotiate their presence in public spaces. Both for pleasure and survival. Removing the assumption that queerness has one face or designated space for existing. There are numerous factors that play a role in all of our identities, and the decisions each of us make in how we show up in our lives.
From Eva Maleen Deckner’s paintings, who originally hails from Hamburg Germany, centering her work on the experiences of lesbian relationships to creating a realm of existence for the range in emotional expressions of women. Negin Fallah from Iran, toils with duality in her installation. Her works circle around the themes of chaos and harmony, questioning human behavior and identity. Painter Tanek from Campobasso, connects the imagery of the human forms of his paintings with nature, and his own personal mission of care and preservation of the land.
Regardless of our cultures or if we find ourselves in new lands, often we find our experiences entangled with those
we share a community with, even if they seem like strangers. Chantal Spapens, Dutch-French performance artist, centers her explosive research around expectations of the often unseen and unpaid domestic labor of the perceived feminine spheres. Vittorio Venturoli, originally from Manfredonia, Italy, approaches his practice from the liminal plane, providing visual language for the space that exists within and connecting each of us together through a shared consciousness. Finally, spoken word, slam poet, and performance artist Olympia, is an intersectional Italian feminist, activist and founding member of Questa Cosa Queer, a performative poetry project in Rome. Her work activates public conversations surrounding the construction of “safe space” and queerness.
Collectively, we all feel invisible at times, but we share common threads. In a city like Rome with strong pockets of LGBTQIA+ communities, the selected artists work together to weave these collectives together. Too often, for those of us who face marginalization or otherness in society, we are only permitted the space to express our experiences if we either objectify our bodies or stay within the confines of what the cishet, patriarchal, white-eurocentric narrative deems palatable, negating us to the ease of silence. These selected artists bring their works together in conversation with each other as they engage guests, creating an immersive experience, exemplifying that the presence of the queer body is not something to be immediately sexualized or targeted. Intentionally placed at the communal and free space of Casa delle Cultura, the artists and local Roman community alike are able to make ties with the land and their own bodies.
What narratives still occupy space in our minds that impact our relationships with our bodies, and therefore, how we are able to interact and be in community with one another?
How to arrive at Casa delle Cultura:
Metro: Line A towards Anagnina until stop Parsi di Centocelle, walk 20 minutes
Tram: Take Roma Giardinetti Tram line from Termini towards Centocelle until stop Berardi, walk 4 minutes
