Beyond Borders: Identity — Catalogue Presentation at MACRO

On 17 December 2025, from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm, the Auditorium of MACRO will host the presentation of the catalogue Beyond Borders: Identity, published by Quodlibet.

Identità oltre confine, MACRO

The event marks a key moment of reflection and restitution for a project developed to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Farnesina Collection of Contemporary Art and shaped through a travelling exhibition hosted by several Italian Cultural Institutes worldwide.

More than a conventional exhibition catalogue, Beyond Borders: Identity positions itself as an open space for reflection on the urgencies of the present. The volume addresses central issues of our time — identity, memory, and coexistence between human beings and nature — questioning the role of art in an era marked by environmental crises, globalisation and profound social transformations. Rather than offering definitive answers, the project opens up a dialogue meant to remain active, generating new interpretations and connections.

Like the exhibition from which it originates, the book moves beyond geographical and symbolic boundaries, expanding its scope through critical contributions and institutional perspectives that strengthen the project’s theoretical framework. The catalogue thus becomes a parallel site of thought, deepening the artists’ research and extending its relevance beyond the temporal limits of the exhibition.

Elena Bellantoni, il manifesto della volpe

Moderated by Benedetta Carpi De Resmini, curator of both the volume and the project, the presentation is conceived as a continuous dialogue between word and gesture, theory and artistic practice. The first part features contributions by Marco Maria Cerbo, Head of the Unit for the Coordination of Italian Cultural Institutes, Cecilia Canziani, art critic and historian, and Giuseppe Garrera, art historian and critic. Authors of essays included in the catalogue, they will reflect on art’s capacity to function as a space of translation, relationship and connection across different languages and contexts.

The core of the event unfolds in the second part, dedicated to the artists. In keeping with the spirit of the travelling exhibition, the auditorium becomes a living, participatory environment where critical discourse meets artistic action. Tomaso Binga, Elena Bellantoni, Rä Di Martino, Paola Gandolfi, Silvia Giambrone, Elisa Montessori and Agnese Purgatorio will activate short performances, readings and gestures, embodying their works and establishing a direct relationship with the audience.

Museo MACRO

Via Nizza, 138, Roma

Date

17 Dicembre

Michael E. Smith at Palazzo Bentivoglio: C C and the Tension of Sculptural Absence

From 30 January to 26 April 2026, Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna hosts C C, the solo exhibition of Michael E. Smith, one of the most radical and influential American artists of his generation.

_2nd_Photo Michael e. Smith

Curated by Simone Menegoi and Tommaso Pasquali, the exhibition unfolds in the underground spaces of the palace, which Smith transforms into an essential, taut and deeply immersive environment. Admission is free, underscoring the project’s commitment to fostering a direct relationship between artistic research and the public.

For more than twenty years, Michael E. Smith has been redefining the boundaries of sculpture and installation through a practice that moves between minimalism and residue, presence and absence, matter and silence. His works often originate from found materials, industrial waste and salvaged objects—elements that carry traces of use, consumption and abandonment. Placed within space with surgical precision, these fragments generate installations of strong emotional impact, in which the everyday appears both fragile and threatening.

Each of Smith’s exhibitions is conceived as a unique, unrepeatable experience. Objects, architecture and light operate in unison, transforming the exhibition space into a living body charged with constant tension. Emptiness, waiting and silence become fundamental compositional tools: it is through subtraction that the artist concentrates meaning, compelling the viewer toward a heightened, almost alert mode of perception.

Michael E. Smith, ph. Carlo Favero

Raised in post-industrial Detroit, Smith translates a memory shaped by industrial decline and urban precarity into sculptural form. His works offer an uneasy reflection on the fate of objects and places, and on their relationship with human time. In C C, this research encounters a site dense with history: the underground spaces of Palazzo Bentivoglio, with their material and symbolic stratifications, become a new field of exploration.

As the curators note, after challenging the neutrality of the white cube, Smith arrives at a space where historical layering and material complexity become an unexpected and indispensable starting point. The dialogue with the site has triggered a network of intimate resonances for the artist, allowing memories tied to an unpublished family story to surface, further intensifying the exhibition’s atmosphere.

Palazzo Bentivoglio

via del Borgo di San Pietro 1, Bologna

Date

30 gennaio – 26 aprile 2026

Giorgio Morandi in the Eni Collection: Two Still Lifes and a Story of Corporate Culture

From 11 December 2025 to 11 January 2026, the Sala Fontana at Palazzo Esposizioni Rome hosts Giorgio Morandi in the Eni Collection. A journey through the cultural history of the six-legged dog and the legacy of Enrico Mattei.

Giorgio Morandi nella Collezione Eni. Un viaggio attraverso la storia culturale del cane a sei zampe e l’eredità di Enrico Mattei, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma

Exhibition promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capital and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, produced by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo and conceived and realised by Eni.

At the heart of the exhibition are two still lifes by Giorgio Morandi, dated 1919 and 1941, belonging to the historic core of the Eni Collection. Seemingly silent works, they nonetheless open up a broader reflection on what it means to collect art, on how art can inhabit workplaces, and on the role played by Enrico Mattei’s vision in shaping a relationship between business and culture that is not ornamental, but structural.

The collection was established between the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Mattei launched a project that went beyond the logic of economic investment. His aim was clear: to create a stimulating environment for Eni’s employees, where the eye could be trained and creativity nurtured even within the everyday context of offices. This is why, alongside Morandi, artists such as Casorati, Sironi, De Pisis, Cantatore and Guttuso entered the collection—works not meant to remain hidden, but to live within working spaces as a constant presence.

Over the years, the collection expanded to include figures such as Boetti, Adami and Rotella, consolidating a principle of sharing: the free availability of the company’s artistic heritage to curators and institutions worldwide. Morandi’s two still lifes, in fact, have already travelled to Japan, Russia, the United States and Spain, carrying with them not only the language of the master, but also an Italian story of modernity and cultural vision.

The exhibition design at Sala Fontana guides visitors through this narrative, revealing a rare continuity: the affinity between Morandi’s painting—defined by restraint, concentration and essential form—and Mattei’s vision, which recognised art as an exercise in disciplined observation. In this encounter between two still lifes and an idea of corporate culture, the exhibition becomes an invitation to look more closely: at objects, at spaces, and at the possibility that art and technology are not opposites, but complementary forces.

Palazzo Esposizioni Roma

Via Nazionale 194

Date

11 Dicembre – 11 Gennaio 2026