The World’s Library  Conversation Piece | Part IX

Yael Bartana, Nicolò Degiorgis, Bruna Esposito, Claire Fontaine, Paolo Icaro, Kapwani Kiwanga, Marcello Maloberti, Francis Offman, Ekaterina Panikanova

Curated by Marcello Smarrelli

Open to the public from 13th December 2023 to 21st April 2024
Opening hours: every day from 11am to 6pm (closed on Tuesdays)
Free Admission

From 13th December 2023 to 21st April 2024, Fondazione Memmo presents The World’s Library (La Biblioteca del Mondo), the ninth edition of Conversation Piece, the annual exhibition, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, which provides an overview of Italian and foreign artists who have chosen Rome as their place of residence, activity and work.

Over forty of the most significant artists on the international scene have participated in the various editions of Conversation Piece over the years, confirming the Italian capital role as a hub for contemporary art.

The ninth edition, entitled The World’s Library, features nine artists who, although they belong to different generations and have dissimilar working methods, use the book as a sort of “construction material” for creating their artworks. The artists invited are: Yael Bartana (b. 1970, Israel. Rome Prize Winner, German Academy Rome Villa Massimo 2023/24); Nicolò Degiorgis (b. 1985, Bolzano); Bruna Esposito (b. 1960, Rome), Claire Fontaine (a feminist conceptual artist founded in Paris in 2004 by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill); Paolo Icaro (b. 1936, Turin); Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978, Hamilton, Canada. Scholarship recipient at the French Academy – Villa Medici); Marcello Maloberti (b. 1966, Codogno); Francis Offman (b. 1987, Butare, Rwanda); Ekaterina Panikanova (b. 1975, St. Petersburg).

The title of the exhibition is a direct reference to the eponymous documentary directed by Davide Ferrario, which recounts the story of the renowned private library put together by the intellectual and writer Umberto Eco. The great academic considered it as having the function of storing the collective memories of humanity, a function that also applies to other libraries all over.

Through a series of works arranged in an imaginary sequence starting from the facade of the 16th century Roman Palazzo Ruspoli and continuing in its courtyard and stable block, the exhibition evokes the image of a library as a repository of universal culture and collective imagination.