The World’s Library

Fondazione Memmo presents The World’s Library (La Biblioteca del Mondo), the ninth edition of Conversation Piece, the annual exhibition curated by Marcello Smarrelli. This new edition features nine artists who, although they belong to different generations and have dissimilar working methods, use the book as a “construction material” for creating their artworks. Yael Bartana (1970, Israel. Winner of the Rome Prize of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo 2023/24), Nicolò Degiorgis (1985, Bolzano), Bruna Esposito (1960, Rome), Claire Fontaine (collective artist founded in Paris in 2004 by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill), Paolo Icaro (1936, Turin), Kapwani Kiwanga (1978, Hamilton, Canada. Fellow at the French Academy – Villa Medici), Marcello Maloberti (1966, Codogno), Francis Offman (1987, Butare, Rwanda), Ekaterina Panikanova (1975, St. Petersburg, Russia).

The title of the exhibition is a direct reference to the eponymous documentary that recounts the legendary library of Umberto Eco, to which he assigns the function – shared with libraries worldwide – of storing the collective memories of humanity. Through a series of works arranged in an imaginary sequence starting from the facade of Palazzo Ruspoli and continuing in its courtyard and stable block, the exhibition aims to provide a metaphor of Rome as an open-air library, a repository of the collective and universal imagination.

The inauguration is scheduled for Tuesday 12 December 2023 from 6.00 pm to 8.00 pm. The exhibition will be open to the public from December 13th until April 21st