Practical information:

26.06.2026
H18:00-00:00
Istituto Svizzero
Via Ludovisi 48, Roma

FREE ENTRY, REGISTRATION HERE

Locus Solus. Anche le statue ricordano il futuro concludes the 2025/2026 residency of the Fellows of Istituto Svizzero. The event, curated by Lorenzo Benedetti, will close with a DJ Set by Sandra Mason.

For the final event of this edition, which concludes the residency of the Roma Calling Fellows at Istituto Svizzero, the title Locus Solus. Even the statues remember the future draws inspiration from the eponymous novel by Raymond Roussel, in which a garden is transformed into a space of apparitions, automata, suspended figures, and forms capable of re-emerging from different times.

At its core lies its atemporal dimension: an isolated yet multiple space in which past and future seem to continually reflect one another.

The relationship between bodies, images, sculptures, historical documents, and reactivated memories thus becomes a central interpretative key. The statue appears as a metaphysical and meta-linguistic figure: a motionless body and, at the same time, a device of transformation, a memory of the ancient sculptural tradition and a prefiguration of the modern automaton.

As in the “statue étrangement vieille” described by Roussel, a “strangely ancient statue” placed within a stone niche, the works seem to inhabit an unstable threshold between what has been and what is yet to appear. Locus solus thus becomes not a single place, but a constellation of overlapping places and times: a space in which figures and double presences traverse the past in order to remember the future.

In this context, the contributions of the Fellows will populate the spaces and garden of Villa Maraini, moving through them as temporary and layered presences, among images, bodies, sounds, and memories reactivated through their time spent in Rome.

Fellows Roma Calling 2025/2026:

Sultan Çoban (Visual Arts, Performance) Alexis Di Santolo (Archaeology) Isabella Foglia (Art History) Paul Hutzli (Visual Arts) margaretha jüngling (Visual Arts, Cooking) Amelia Juri (Literature) Viola Leddi (Visual Arts) Tobias Oswald (History) Caterina Schorer (Ancient Studies) Gabriel Stöckli (Visual Arts, Sound) Cinzia Tuena (History) Jacopo Zani (Architecture, Urban Studies) Eva Zornio (Visual Arts, Performance)