The Uncanny House

In the wake of the recurrent leitmotiv that nourished literary fantasy, fairy tales, horror stories, and artistic creation alike since the early 19th century, The Uncanny House, curated by Ilaria Marotta & Andrea Baccin at Museum Casa di Goethe in Rome, investigates the sense of “unheimlich” within the rooms of the Rome apartment where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived between 1786 and 1788. A place that provides an especially favored locus for uncanny disturbances: its apparent domesticity, its residue of nostalgia, and its role as the last and most intimate shelter of private comfort are sharpened by the contrast of empty spaces, crevices, chimeras, ghosts, alien spirits, time shifts and voices that creep in. Through the work of eighteen international artists, the house thus becomes a place where ambiguities, obsessive thoughts, and the neurotic folds of the human sphere become apparent.

Participating artists: Mathis Altmann, Dora Budor, Tomaso De Luca, Anna Franceschini, Lenard Giller, Caspar Heinemann, Mélanie Matranga, Brandon Ndife, Giangiacomo Rossetti, Gregor Schneider, Max Hooper Schneider, Augustas Serapinas, Ser Serpas, Giovanna Silva, Analisa Teachworth, Nico Vascellari, Rachel Whiteread, Marina Xenofontos.

A book, published by Sorry Press and edited by the exhibition curators and the museum’s director, Gregor H. Lersch, is published on the occasion of the show.

Exhibition architecture by BB.

Through September 1, 2024
Casa di Goethe Museum
Via del Corso 18, Rome