Ex_tra - Art on Rome's ancient buildings

NUCLEO – MICAELA LATTANZIO, Palazzetto Jovinelli – Via Guglielmo Pepe, 37

curated by Chiara Nicolini

Nucleus has a geological, mineral structure.

Its composition evokes the Mexican Cenote — Dzonot in the Mayan language — meaning sacred water, while also recalling the molecular structure of a mineral, creating a dual interpretation that highlights the profound connection between the micro and the macrocosm.

The three-dimensional fragments are created through the photographic decomposition and recomposition of seas, oceans, deserts, and volcanoes of the Earth — the fundamental elements that generated life on this planet.

The pixel palette takes shape to create The Crater, archetype of the cave, from which the primordial magma overflows, symbolically evoking the principle of existence — from which filters the light of knowledge and inspiration. The chosen detail of Nucleus is, in fact, an opening onto the scaffolding of the building — an invitation to the passerby to engage in the act of seeing, to become imagination, and to glimpse new possibilities for inhabiting the world.— Micaela Lattanzio

In this difficult moment, when time seems suspended due to the closure of museums, cinemas, and theaters, we are deprived of all those moments of encounter, stimulation, and reflection that enrich and help us evolve. After months, this absence has become increasingly pressing, and from here arises the need to rediscover the dimensions we have lost.

Thus, we turn to the web to frequent our places of art, theater, and music. Museums, galleries, and theaters are working to find ways to keep us close to culture, to keep those vital impulses alive. But is it enough?

The pandemic has made us understand the meaning of absence — an absence we try to fill — and it is not far-fetched to draw a parallel with the scaffolding used to restore a building: the palace suddenly becomes absent. In its place, a surface, a protective screen erected for safety, removes from the street its familiar presence — and in Rome, that missing presence is often a monument.

From this reflection was born the project #EX_TRA, with the aim of bringing art outdoors — into the city, into the streets — installed on the scaffolding for the duration of the restoration, as an artwork that urges us to pause, to look up, to allow ourselves to be distracted for a moment, and to admire an artist’s work.

Works displayed outside galleries or museums create a rupture, a sense of disorientation that stimulates curiosity and invites us to redraw our paths: the city becomes a gallery and, as in past experiments (“the museum outside the museum”), #EX_TRA proposes the gallery outside the gallery.

It will not be a passive experience — each person will respond to the image before them through their own experiences and inner world.

#EX_TRA will be a gift to Rome.

The project thus dedicates these spaces — usually dominated by advertising — to creative dissemination, moving between art, design, and literature, with the intent to generate new inspiration.

#EX_TRA is a contraction of the Latin phrase Exempla Trahunt — “examples draw us along” — and the hope is that the project may serve as a stimulus for a new way of supporting cultural activity and communication in general, through a narrative journey that explores new languages.

Conceived and designed by Gruppo PouchainSilvia Salama Pouchain, PresidentChiara Nicolini, Curator Claudio Presta, Project Director