RODRIGO TORRES. ÁGUA MOLE EM PEDRA DURA

(LITTLE STROKES FELL GREAT OAKS)

9 june- 13 august 2026

Rodrigo Torres, Água mole em pedra dura, installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria A Gentil Carioca. Photo © A Gentil Carioca

rhinoceros gallery continues its collaboration with the Brazilian gallery A Gentil Carioca with a second project: the first solo show in Italy of artist Rodrigo Torres, “Água mole em pedra dura” (“Little Strokes Fell Great Oaks”). The exhibition was conceived during his two-month artistic residency between c.r.e.t.a, Rome’s leading center for ceramic arts, where the works were produced, and rhinoceros, where the sculptures and a new series of works on paper were completed.

From June 9th to August 13th, 2026, Torres unveils a new series of works influenced by Rome’s cultural landscape, including ceramic sculptures and a fountain. The artist will also present a new series of drawings and paintings on paper, mediums he has explored throughout his career but never presented to the public. Born and raised in Tijuca, a Rio de Janeiro neighborhood long defined by the presence of the forest and by the coexistence between urbanization and nature, Torres developed a practice deeply informed by the tensions between growth, erosion, permanence, and destruction. The sculptures explore the transformation of matter and the return to the earth: minerals extracted from the soil, elevated to monumental shapes, eventually fragment and return to the ground under the combined action of natural forces and human intervention. The reflection draws on Torres’ direct experience of the Tijuca Forest, where monumental trees fall, parts of mountains crumble under the action of wind and water, fungi spread across fallen trunks and seeds proliferate: “what the earth gives, it also reclaims.”

In Rome, the artist encountered an opposite condition. Here, architecture appears suspended in a constant effort to resist time and deterioration. Cracks are repaired, surfaces preserved, and structures reinforced in order to delay collapse. Torres’ sculptures exist within this strain, questioning the stability of their own structures and suggesting a latent possibility of collapse. Alongside the sculptures, the trompe-l’œil paintings resembling collages translate his sculptural language into two dimensions, decomposing material forms into overlapping planes and fragments. The exhibition also marks a shift in Torres’ approach to surface and color. Rather than employing his usual glazed ceramic technique, in which pigments are fixed through firing, the artist develops surfaces that reference Roman marble trompe-l’œil painting and frescoes encountered throughout the city. Painted directly onto the ceramic works, the interventions are not fired again, preserving a more immediate and unstable pictorial quality. In this new dialogue between Rome and Rio de Janeiro, the exhibition takes shape in close relation to its context, bringing together different practices and geographies through a reflection on matter, time, and transformation.

Rodrigo Torres lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. He has a degree in Painting from the Escola de Belas Artes da UFRJ (2003), studied Photography at Ateliê da Imagem and took part in the Programa de Aprofundamento at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV). He worked as an assistant to the artist Luiz Zerbini, also in Rio de Janeiro, where he consolidated his poetic research and broadened his dialog with other contemporary languages. In his work, ceramics, paper, wood and metal are not just mediums: they form the very sea of ideas on which the artist sails. As the artist says: “In this sea I cast my net and find stories, cultures, knowledge, technologies and much more. In my boat I cut, paste, knead, burn, use whatever tool is necessary to transform my collection into an offering, like a lake that reflects the sky and transforms birds into liquid stains.”

Camouflage age and mimicry, conceptually present in his work, not only make up his aesthetic, but also instigate the public’s eye, shuffling the boundaries between what is original and what has been transformed. In 2026, the artist participated in a residency at c.r.e.t.a in Rome, which will culminate in an exhibition at rhinoceros.

In 2024, he participated in the group exhibition “Sambaqui” at the Inclusartiz Institute in Rio de Janeiro and showed the solo “Alterada” at the A Gentil Carioca Gallery, in São Paulo. In 2023, he took part in the group exhibition “Comunidade de Ressonância” at the Veras Cultural Centre in Florianópolis. Presented the solo exhibitions “Vale da Utopia” at the Artium Institute and “Livro de Quartzo” at A Gentil Carioca, both in São Paulo, in 2022. In 2020, he took part in the exhibition “A Casa Carioca” at the Rio Art Museum (MAR) in Rio de Janeiro. In 2019, he took part in the group show “BRASIL! Focus sull’arte brasiliana contemporanea” at the Museo Ettore Fico (MEF) in Turin, Italy, and “A Luta Continua” at The Sylvio Perlstein Collection - Hauser & Wirth, New York.

In 2017 he took part in “Songs for my Hands”, the Curitiba International Biennial at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON) and the “Art of the Treasure Hunt: the Grand Tour” project in the Tuscany region of Italy.

In the same year he also took part in the exhibitions “Modos de ver o Brasil: Itaú Cultural 30 anos”, at the Lucas Nogueira Garcez Pavilion (Oca) in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, and “A luz que vela o corpo é a mesma que revela a tela”, at Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro.

In 2016 he opened the solo show “Apreensões” at Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janeiro and took part in the group show “Mapas, Cartas, Guias e Portulanos” at Sala de Arte Santander, São Paulo, Brazil. He received the Itamaraty Prize for Contemporary Art 2013. His works are part of the collections of MAR - Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; José Olympio Pereira, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Itaú Cultural de Fotografia, São Paulo, Brazil, Kadist Art Foundation and Raja Contemporary Collection, both in Paris, France.

Informations

Via del Velabro 9A, Roma

9 june - 13 august 2026

Every day from 11am to 7pm

gallery@rhinocerosroma.com

+39 340 643 0435

MARIUCCIA SECOL: UNRAVELING

12 june- 1 november 2026

curated by Monika Branicka ed Eva Brioschi

Mariuccia Secol in 1968 in front of a painting from the series II Genesi. Courtesy of the artist’s family (private archive). Photo: unknown author.

From 12 June to 1 November 2026, Muzeum Susch will present Mariuccia Secol: Unraveling, the first major institutional retrospective dedicated to the eclectic Italian artist and activist Mariuccia Secol (b. 1929). Curated by Monika Branicka and Eva Brioschi, the exhibition spans more than seventy years of artistic practice, offering a comprehensive view of a body of work that intertwines radical feminism, social critique, and historical rediscovery.

This retrospective aligns with Muzeum Susch’s founding mission to highlight overlooked or misunderstood women artists of the international avant-garde, restoring to them the recognition long afforded to their male counterparts. Mariuccia Secol, whose work was for many years excluded from dominant narratives, now emerges as one of the most original voices in postwar Italian art. The exhibition reconstructs an artistic trajectory that remained marginalized for decades, presenting numerous previously unseen works brought to light through direct collaboration with the artist.

The exhibition traces Secol’s evolution from her early paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by existential themes and the trauma of war (Burned Cities, Holocaust). A crucial turning point was her work as a teacher in the painting workshop at the Bizzozero-Varese Psychiatric Hospital (1965–1988), during Franco Basaglia’s psychiatric reform movement. Within this context of marginalization, Secol discovered creativity as a tool for self-determination and healing.

Influenced by the climate of protest in 1968 and the emerging feminist movements, Secol abandoned her “silent brushes” and began working with everyday domestic materials such as aprons and metal scouring pads, which became the raw material for a practice grounded in refusal and resistance. The iconic work Casa di bambola (Doll’s House, 1970–73), created by dismantling her own clothing, including her wedding dress, marked her decisive rejection of the singular roles of wife and mother.

Le barriere, exhibition at Galleria Porta Ticinese, Milan, as part of the Mezzo Cielo series, 21 April – 12 June 1978. Left: work by Mariuccia Secol, Le barriere, unraveled threads and yarn, 180 × 180 × 180 cm; right: work by Milli Gandini, cross-stitch embroidery. © Mariuccia Secol and Manuela Gandini. Courtesy of the artist’s private archive. Photo: unknown author.

A central focus of the exhibition is the reconstruction of the years of activism of the Gruppo Femminista Immagine of Varese, founded in 1974 by Secol together with Milli Gandini and Mirella Tognola, and soon joined by Silvia Cibaldi, Clemen Parrocchetti, and Mariagrazia Sironi. The group became connected to the global campaign for Wages for Housework, taking part in major collective gatherings of the movement.

The exhibition also presents documentation of the group’s historic participation in the 1978 Venice Biennale and highlights the development of Secol’s distinctive formal language, centered on the concept of “refusal.” Rather than weaving, Secol removes threads from the fabric’s structure, creating voids and tears that evoke the female body and open up new possibilities of meaning, allowing light and knowledge to emerge through inner exploration. Mature works such as Animus-Anima (1982) demonstrate how the human fiber is deconstructed to make space for thought.

In recent decades, Secol’s work has expanded toward a broader global critique, addressing issues such as migration crises, international conflicts, and ecological collapse. She was a pioneer in developing a form of intersectionality in which women’s struggles intersect with the defense of all marginalized and oppressed identities.

Mariuccia Secol: Unraveling is more than an exhibition: it presents a “rebellious archive” that challenges the official history of art and broadens prevailing narratives about the artistic practices of the twentieth century.

Mariuccia Secol, Sala d’attesa / Bisso rosso (Waiting Room / Red Byssus), 1988, unraveled and mended tapestry on Cordura and cotton, 170 × 245 cm. © Mariuccia Secol. Photo: Magdalena Typiak.

The exhibition unfolds as a natural cycle, a circle coming full turn: the first large room focuses on the transforming body in relation to the different stages of the chrysalis and offers a comprehensive overview of Mariuccia Secol’s artistic journey. In the other rooms, the narrative develops before returning to its point of departure, reflecting her personal and creative path.

The journey begins with the dark, somber paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, dense with the trauma of war and existential tension, and continues with the paintings of the mid-1960s, which reveal the emergence of a new sense of subjectivity. From traditional painting, the artist moved on to her first textile works, symbols of a refusal of conventional patterns, culminating in the frayed silhouettes, where the technique of removing threads creates new forms through emptiness, allowing light and awareness to emerge.

At the center of the first room, in all its imposing presence, stands the monumental work Donna ponte: a ten-meter textile installation that embodies her poetics of intersectionality, capable of bringing together different fronts — between masculine and feminine, self and other — and of embracing universal marginality as a message of hope for the future: a perfect representation of this synthesis of her research, oriented toward welcoming difference and valuing fragile subjectivities.

After this comprehensive introduction, the exhibition develops thematically and chronologically, with rooms dedicated to different media, including pastels, fabrics, and ceramics, highlighting her freedom in moving beyond the boundaries of traditional languages. These sections emphasize Secol’s diverse techniques and her ability to navigate the fluid boundary between physical expression and ethical commitment, reconstructing a universe long experienced by the artist herself as personal and intimate, thus bringing a private and domestic practice to the center of institutional attention.

What emerges is an uncompromising vision, underscoring how, seventy years later, many issues remain unresolved.

Milli Gandini and Mariuccia Secol at the exhibition La mamma è uscita at Galleria Cavedra, Varese, 1–23 March 1980. In the background, Secol’s work La mamma è uscita. Courtesy of the artist’s family (private archive). Photo: unknown author. Reproduction: Magdalena Typiak.

Hatje Cantz will publish a comprehensive monograph with texts by Monika Branicka, Eva Brioschi, Maria Bremer, Sonia D’Alto, Janis Jefferies, Maria Inés Plaza Lazo, Marco Scotini, and an interview with Manuela Gandini.

Mariuccia Secol was born in Castellanza, Varese, in 1929. She is an Italian artist and activist, trained under Galliano Mazzon and Francesco Fedeli. She settled in Daverio in 1954, transforming her home into a lively cultural salon frequented by intellectuals such as Bruno Munari, Enrico Baj, and Leonardo Sciascia.

Her direction of the painting atelier at the Bizzozero psychiatric hospital from 1965 to 1988 was fundamental, as she experienced the Basaglian revolution firsthand. In the wake of 1968 and feminism, Secol embraced the “creativity of refusal,” abandoning brushes in favor of textiles and domestic materials.

In 1974, she co-founded the Gruppo Femminista “Immagine” of Varese and advocated for wages for housework. She invented a process of removing threads from fabric that evokes the wounds of the body. Her practice evolved toward an intersectional commitment, addressing ecological crises, migration, and universal violence. Secol dismantles imposed roles in order to stitch together a new collective and conscious identity.

INFINITIES COMMISSION: nora chipaumire: gadzi

3 june- 23 august

nora chipaumire 2016 © Boyle

Tate Modern today unveils gadzi, an original installation by nora chipaumire, the recipient of the Infinities Commission 2026, a free to attend annual commission showcasing the limitless experimentation of contemporary art. Drawing on the legends, stones, and soil of her native Zimbabwe, multi-award-winning international artist nora chipaumire, has created an immersive, multi-sensory environment that brings together sculpture, sound, and moving image. Rooted in the legends of the Shona people, gadzi takes its name from gadziguru, the oldest and most powerful female presence, a generative force tied to land, ancestry, and creation.

Born in 1965 in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, chipaumire makes work and creates ideas that straddle multiple imaginaries: African, black, woman. Her artistic practice ranges from opera, dance, installation and film, channeling a punk resistance to each medium. The artist has transformed Tate Modern’s iconic East Tank into a sculptural and sonic environment that echoes the ancient landscapes of Zimbabwe. Defined by granite outcrops, red soil, and vast skies, the work takes shape as a ‘living and breathing organism’, constructed by hand and evoking a sense of enduring, haunted resilience. “There’s no answer to what I’m doing,” chipaumire reflects. “It’s a gesture I’m offering, a gesture to save the energy of the landscape, to move this energy, and to protect it.”

nora chipaumire, NEHANDA 2021 © Alla Kovgan @ Mko Malkhasya

The installation creates space for performance and features a custom-built dub sound system embedded within sculptural elements, activating the space through vibration as much as sound. Sound and movement are both integral to chipaumire’s practice, and for gadzi she draws on influences from dub and its punk subcultures, as well as Chimurenga music, all of which are associated with revolution and resistance. Drawing connections between the low-frequency sonic force of dub, which has African roots, and the geological and spiritual presence of stone, the work imagines how, in Zimbabwe, “God was heard through the rocks.” gadzi invites audiences to engage physically: to move through the structures, peer into their depths, sit on the speakers, and feel sound resonate through their bodies. Accompanying film elements introduce shifting light and visions of feminine presence within nature, extending the work’s exploration of land, spirit, and perception.

On select dates in June, gadzi will be activated by live performances in which chipaumire is joined by 14 performers and artists to lead a procession of movement and sound through the gallery, blending a confluence of guitars, saxophone and electronic sounds with traditional instruments of the Shona people: hoshos, mbiras and ngomas. A special edition of Tate Modern’s monthly Lates on Friday 26 June will also take inspiration from the Commission, bringing the gallery to life with a free programme of music, conversation, film and workshops, in collaboration with chipaumire. The artist’s mountainous speaker installation – designed conjointly with Ari Marcopoulos and Kara Walker and constructed by Matt Jackson Studio – will arrive in the Turbine Hall, celebrating the legacy of sound systems.

Launched in 2025 and with funding confirmed for the next decade, the Infinities Commission presents a long-term commitment to platforming international artists at the forefront of contemporary art, empowering them to realise ambitious, future-facing projects at pivotal moments in their careers. Each year, an expert panel is asked to select an innovative and boundary-breaking international artist to create a visionary new work for the Tanks, Tate Modern’s unique spaces dedicated to performance, installation and time-based art. For 2026, the selection panel included artist and academic Tony Cokes, curator Elvira Dyangani Ose, critic and writer Nora Khan and researcher and curator Daniel Blanga Gubbay. In addition to selecting the commissioned artist, the panel are also invited to choose three artists or collectives to receive a grant of £10,000 to fund research and development in their respective practices. This year’s bursary recipients are: collective Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, and Sahej Rahal.

Informations Infinities Commission: nora chipaumire: gadzi

3 June – 23 August 2026

Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG

Open daily 10.00–18.00, and until 21.00 every Friday and Saturday

Admission free

More information at tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern