In the year of the Plinian Bimillenary, which Como celebrates in 2023 and 2024, the Como Arte Foundation, in collaboration with the Municipality of Como and the Accademia Pliniana, and under the patronage of the National Committee for the Celebrations of the Two Thousandth Anniversary of the Birth of Pliny the Elder, pays homage to one of Como’s most illustrious citizens, proposing a new key to interpreting Pliny’s immense and still living work.
The exhibition puts in dialogue, in the neoclassical rooms of Villa Olmo, works by 18 contemporary artists with archaeological finds dating back to ancient Roman times and coming from the Paolo Giovio Archaeological Museum in Como, the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome, the Museum of Natural History in Milan, and with ancient prints from the Achille Bertarelli Collection of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, both present for the first time in Como, and from the Naturalistic Collections of the Liceo Alessandro Volta in Como.
It is an ambitious operation that demonstrates how the central themes in Pliny’s reflection—in particular, the fragility of knowledge and human beings, science and natural phenomena, the use and abuse of land, and the furious reaction of nature when it is violated—are still of crucial importance in contemporary reflection and production.
The works of the 18 artists, selected by curator Sonia D’Alto, range across a wide range of artistic languages—from textile art to video art, from site-specific installation to collage—and are placed in close dialogue with ancient artifacts and prints, restoring a vision of overbearing topicality.
The metaphor of the volcano—an erotic force linked to nature, death, and rebirth—surfaces throughout the exhibition. This same force, primal and overwhelming, is featured in Susan Sontag’s novel The Volcano Lover (1992), which inspired the exhibition’s subtitle. The volcano theme is also central to Pliny’s biography, as it is inextricably linked to the tragic event in which he lost his life in 79 AD.
The exhibition investigates the obsession with wonder, discovery, and knowledge. A passion so strong in Pliny—a lover of the cosmos and of the human being—that it led him to death in order to save his fellow man and observe up close one of the most powerful phenomena in nature: the volcanic eruption.
Curated by:
Sonia D’Alto
Patecipating artists: Maria Theresa Alves, Yto Barrada, Mirella Bentivoglio, Rossella Biscotti, Jimmie Durham, Chioma Ebimana, Rose Marie Eggmann, Petrit Halilaj, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Pauline Julier, Mike Kelley, Lavanya Mani, Aldo Mondino, Raffaella Naldi Rossano, Diana Policarpo, Nico Vascellari, Alice Visentin, Slavs and Tatars.
at Villa Olmo, Como
until January 7, 2024