Opens today a New Experiment of the Alda Fendi Foundation – Experiments in Rome, a fascinating, gold shimmering and surrounded by a hypnotic buzzing of bees, conceived and signed by artistic director Raffaele Curi.
The installation in the Forum golden bees fly – Theocritus by Raffaele Curi is presented today, on the occasion of World Bee Day called by the United Nations with the aim of safeguarding the existence of this insect so important for life on earth. The exhibition will be open from May 21 to June 21, 2021 by appointment. The installation is presented inside the ancient tower and is open by reservation. Admission is free and is allowed for two visitors at a time.
On the occasion of this day, the Alda Fendi Foundation – Experiments presents its new artistic experiment in the Roman Forum: the installation in the Forum Golden Bees Fly – Theocritus in the magnificent location, unique in the world: the Tower of Saints Luke and Martina in the Roman Forum, in front of the Mamertine Prison, at the center of the most impressive and prestigious vestiges of ancient Rome. A unique place where poetry, history, art and ecology are combined in a unique and surprising mix!
Bees are today more than ever at the center of ours and also of the vision of Raffaele Curi, who illuminates with golden reflections one of the most beautiful places in the world, in the heart of the city of Rome among the ancient vestiges that testify to the power of ancient Rome, in a dialogue with the Baroque of Pietro da Cortona, the architect who designed the Church of Saints Luke and Martina, in front of the Mamertine Prison where St. Peter was imprisoned. A sacred sense pervades the entire installation that collects photographic images and visions borrowed from the history of art, with a synchronic gaze so bold as to unite different cultures and eras and cancel any temporal distance. Visitors find themselves walking on a carpet of words moved by the wind, while the air is saturated with the song of bees, their tight dialogues and incomprehensible to us, yet pervaded by a hypnotic and profound musicality.
The suggestion stems from an idyll by Theocritus, a poetic fragment that emerges from time and resonates like the longing for a lost splendor, which Raffaele Curi’s installation tries to grasp and make shine once again in all its splendor. “Golden bees from the Forum – Curi writes – with the poetics of Theocritus’ Idylls. Motionless the anxiety of a reminiscence in an epochal war setting. You will return to soothe the wounds with milk and acacia honey”. In a scenario, such as the present one, of precariousness and uncertainty, of disturbances and conflicts never healed, the necessity of poetry arises as a foundation of humanity, in the desire to preserve the world in which we live so that it may return to be the Paradise that we believe to have lost, treasuring the industriousness of the bees that become a symbol of strength, hope and vitality.
Raffaele Curi, artistic director of the foundation, creates this installation at the center of the Forum a true visual poem, all to be discovered, a journey through images and words, able to make the citation and evocation the raw material for an artistic and poetic experiment of strong suggestion. A tribute to Rome, through its most important historical and artistic evidences, that is the ancient empire and the Baroque. But also an opportunity to convey, through art, an important ecological message, suspended between poetic wonder and historical reality.
To testify to the importance of bees not only in nature but also in the history of art, Raffaele Curi brings together Egyptian hieroglyphics from the tomb of Sesostri I, a silver tetradrachma from Ephesus in Greece, the IV book of Virgil’s Georgics, and medieval visions from the Tacuinum sanitatis casanatensis, Albrecht Dürer’s Cupid Thief of Honey, the base of the Equestrian Monument to Ferdinand I de’ Medici made by Giambologna in Florence, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fountain of Bees, Pietro da Cortona’s Triumph of Divine Providence painted on the ceiling of Palazzo Barberini, and Le coeur des abeilles.
Alda Fendi par Pierre et Gilles photographed by Carlo Bellincampi. The connector of these passages along the paths of history and art, freely evoked and connected by Raffaele Curi, is the coat of arms of Urban VIII Barberini, with its three famous bees. And the buzzing of the bees that resonates seducing the visitor is by Antonio Infantino.
“If I could choose, I would be reborn as a bee – declares Alda Fendi – but not as a queen bee, as a worker bee. Laborious, intent on saving the earth. In the Forum, bees visit us, injecting us with the pollen of life, precious, forerunner of any vaccine”.
From May 21, 2021 – June 21, 2021 Installation by Raffaele Curi IN THE TOWER OF SAINTS LUCA AND MARTINA AT THE ROMAN FORUM via della Curia 4 Rome
INFORMATIONS:
Alda Fendi Foundation – Experiments
Address: Rome, via della Curia 4
The exhibition is open from May 21 to June 21, 2021, from Monday to Friday from 4pm to 8pm.
Free entrance. Reservation is required.
For information: (+39) 333.2291988 – info@fondazionealdafendi-esperimenti.it
She is an independent curator, art advisor and international marketing management consultant. For more than 20 years, he has been a cultural designer of events related to contemporary art with particular attention to unusual spaces and interactions with other arts.