Rome is not in Rome (Pt.II Mythology to Abattoirs)





Rome is not in Rome (Pt.II Mythology to Abattoir) is a scenography driven by contrary and complimentary modern impulses: a drive to kill, a compulsion to conserve and a desire to animate. It consists of fragmented hybrids; mythical animals, furniture, architectural icons and luxury goods.

Juxtaposing signs of the zoo and the museum, this work probes their shared scopic impulse as modern enclosures designed to hierarchize life and culture by classification. Getting confused between dead and living, fantasy and fact, human and non-human, could place one on the wrong side of history, relegated to believing in ghosts and monsters.  

But ghosts and monsters are both wonderful storytellers, and uncompromising historians with a naughty sense of humour. They tell us that it is always a paper-thin line between looting and decorating, pillage and knowledge, plinths and prisons, skinning and sun-tanning, colony and summer camp, gold rush and Black Friday.


SFMOMA, US