SIREN SONGS

Around the exhibition
Siren songs—Literary and artistic symposium on the water
December 5: Fountains in collaboration with Silvia Ginzburg.
December 6: Seas & salty imaginaries in collaboration with Juliette Bessette.

Two multidisciplinary days devoted to water, deployed as a diptych, are part of the programming of the Siren songs exhibition through a series of encounters, readings and artistic performances. With: Yasmine El Amri, Laure Prouvost, Lily Abichahine, Hervé Brunon, Nina Léger, Laure Limongi, Yannis Maniatakos Estate represented by Sylvia Kouvali, Morgane Ortin and le club des pleurs, Lara Tabet, Juliette Bessette and Silvia Ginzburg (list of participants in progress).

Curators of the exhibition: Caroline Courrioux and Sam Stourdzé

Artists: Mounir Ayache, Monira Al Qadiri, Younes Ben Slimane, Alix Boillot, Bianca Bondi, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Madison Bycroft, Alex Cecchetti, Gaëlle Choisne, Jumana Emil Abboud, Klodin Erb, Simone Fattal, Estrid Lutz, Rose-Lynn Fisher, Yiannis Maniatakos, Lou Masduraud, Raffaela Naldi Rossano, Dala Nasser, Valentin Noujaïm and Maïa Tellit Hawad, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Laure Prouvost, Pamela Rosenkranz, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Bassem Saad, Chiyuki Sakagami, Himali Singh Soin, Emilija Skarnulyte, Aïcha Snoussi and Kusukazu Uraguchi.

About the exhibition
On the ground and in the atmosphere, as both an element and a resource, water constitutes us and overflows the world. Protean in form—rain, seas, droplets, dew, streams, clouds, fog, and tears—it is the essential source of all life. Diverted, extracted, and polluted, water has now become a vital issue in the ongoing ecological crisis. But although it has been conquered, the abyssal depths remain today more mysterious than the Moon, land of dreams, inhabited by fantastic monsters.

Following the exhibition Stories of Stones (2023), Villa Medici is continuing its exploration of the elements with Siren songs. Water as told by artists. From Rome, where water seems eternal, this show brings together the work of 30 international contemporary artists, including 10 pieces specially commissioned for the occasion.

This exhibition follows the cycle of water, from sunken civilizations to ritual practices and the troubled waters of trade routes. The hybrid figure of the siren or mermaid, by turns malevolent and protective, half woman, half animal, acts as a guide to navigate between these worlds, from the depths to the surface. Her ambivalence resonates with that of water, a space of metamorphoses, between waters of rejuvenation and of doom.

The show invites us to explore the different states of water through the artists’ eyes, from its representation to its political implications, from the commodity transformed into a resource to the metaphorical quest for its source. Diving into this liquid world opens up a host of contradictions, when tales of water’s origins intermingle with those that conjure up future times in which it threatens us with flooding and drought, and sea levels rise while rivers run dry.

Water is in crisis, as the artists remind us, steering a course from the polluted waters of cities to the straits of natural spaces, sounding the death knell, tacitly or otherwise, for its reckless use and starting a critical conversation on our collective responsibility to preserve it. Reclaiming ground, flowing, and recapturing the magical properties of water in order to think about our world: such is the thread that Siren songs. Water as told by artists invites us to follow.