Deborah Schamoni

With the 2020 Art Quadriennale we propose a reinterpretation of Italian art from the 1960s to the present day. In doing so we wish to explore, through transgenerational and transdisciplinary paths, avant-garde positions that are not often featured in traditional narratives, while also combining them with the imagery of the younger generations in order to rethink the past and to look at the contemporary world and its urgent needs with new eyes. The disciplines of music, theater, fashion, dance, architecture, design and cinema are in constant dialog with the visual arts. The exhibition investigates their mutual contribution as it dwells on the enrichment of artistic expressions by queer, feminist and decolonial visions of society and its political organization.

The title FUORI (meaning ‘out’) is an invitation to think outside the box; to take an eccentric and off-centered stance; to adopt an oblique view on a mutual relationship with otherness. It is an homage to FUORI!, the name of the first Italian association for homosexual rights that was formed at the beginning of the 1970s and, alongside with feminist and transsexual groups, promoted the struggles for a more equal society in Italy. FUORI responds now to the primary need to overcome the physical and metaphorical restrictions imposed on all of us in the first months of 2020.

The paths of the 43 selected artists have given rise to sometimes-fragmented lines of research, discourse, approach and trend that sink and then re-emerge or remain constant in the variation of media or content –methodologies that run alongside each other while not always diverging from each other.The exhibition starts with a close reading of the history of the Rome Quadriennale; with the history of Italian art of the 20th and 21st centuries; with the history of the building that hosts it; and with the city of Rome. These four components have made it possible to identify a structure and three thematic areas – ‘the Palace,’ ‘Desire’ and ‘the Incommensurable’.

Curated by Sarah Cosulich and Stefano Collicelli Cagol
Text: Art Quadriennale
Photos: DSL Studio
Courtesy of Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma