and oblivion as a consequence of the destruction of certain enclaves of the city and of the memories linked to them. [...] In Mussolini’s time, new changes were still under way, which led to the preservation and idealised recreation of certain ancient Roman monuments and the simultaneous demolition of buildings from past times considered as decadent. This methodology was applied to the Theatre of Marcellus, to the Mausoleum of Augustus and to the whole archaeological area of Rome, which led to the disappearance of much of the surrounding urban fabric that existed until that then. My first line of work plays with the idea of pentimento (repentance) in painting. The overlay of images on the same canvas of a site in its previous and current versions leads to an interweaving of spatialtemporal dimensions. In the pictures what is manifest coexists with what has been hidden. That latency generates a phantasmagoria, a threshold where the present and the absent coalesce, people and hidden things, where the invisible shines through the visible.” Gabriela Bettini’s pictorial work adds layers of time and space, partial images of past times that are stuck onto the main image, overlapping one over another and portraying other experiences of the space represented. Activity at the Theatre of Marcellus with its heterogeneous population prior to its restoration is represented by an image of its inhabitants in the same precinct that Bettini superimposes on the present view. This pictorial overlap of two moments, past and present, is codified by distinguishing this accumulation of strata through the pictorial device of drawing the strips of adhesive tape that would be placed at the corners of the added image had it been printed or painted on a sheet of paper.
Her vision of architecture fades into a clean line or dark drawing in the background that brings the whole grouping to an intermediate world between perspective, real vision or sketched annotation of the work. Her work originated from the analysis of places in the world of emigration: Rome as a destination and the port of Genoa as a departure route converge in this exhibition. In Viaggio, the port of Genoa, where Gabriela Bettini investigates the route of emigrants heading for Argentina, she accumulates views of quite different places. Bettini links her trip to Genoa with her Roman residency through two profiles: the outline of the hills surrounding the port as the background and on top of them, stuck onto them, the other reality of the outline of the hilly landscape close to Rome, close to the city. That double silhouette merges into a single mountain line in which the ever-present element of the strips of adhesive tape makes us aware that they belong to another reality. The oil technique she uses, so she tells us, evokes the pentimento, the repentance of the artist painting over a previous painting whose image ends up becoming visible, gradually appearing through over time. Bettini superimposes her images, painting one on top of the other, but also controlling what she wants to be seen of one and the other. This is a painting of reality in which the concept takes precedence and time and space merge on the same stage documenting the work with the addition of another layer of meanings and references. Jaime González Cela y Manuela Pedrón Nicolau One of the most dynamic forces within the group of residents during this last year Academy were the curators Jaime González Cela and Manuela Pedrón
Nicolau, who throw body and soul into their work as cultural curators. Two curators who practiced their work on their fellow grant-holders, organising related activities outside and within the Academy: from the coordination of a purpose-built ‘coworking’ area with its bespoke furniture built by the residents under the experienced eye of Carlos Granados, to the sessions for the programme Estudio 7, which brought selected Italian curators and artists to the institution. Coworking also involved setting up a panel indicating all the relevant cultural institutions, a map of Rome with handwritten notes on a board with pertinent information on the main cultural centres of the city, a priceless resource-guide for the residents. Their activities extended beyond the premises too: they took charge of Martin López Lam’s exhibition of at the Bologna Comics Festival and the presentation of the preview of Alberto Díaz’s film at another activity they organised. Their presentation at this exhibition will be accompanied by the book they have produced on their activity. The publication is funded by their project and is a catalogue of the work they have curated, which they describe for us in their own words: “Our residency project investigates and develops the relationships between a centre for artistic creation and the cultural and urban fabric of its context, taking as a case study the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. The driving force of this project is a curatorial research project centred on the analysis of spaces with a cultural identity and the development of strategies and particular forms of approach that allow us to experiment with the role and the possibilities of artistic practices and collaboration. For this purpose, during our residency we carried out a theoretical research plan from approaches close to those of institutional criticism and new institutions, which we applied to the
reality and context of the Academy as a centre of cultural production. On the other hand, we set about tracking and tracing the locations, agents, cultural and social initiatives that shape the contemporary Italian cultural context. The ultimate goal of these two processes of analysis was to generate a curatorial program that connects and disseminates the work of grant holders with the Italian artistic panorama. We have designed and developed the different activities with the intention of generating new synergies and projects in the future. We devised this programme with an open code approach, in the sense that it can be used and expanded in the future by the next batch of residents and directors of the institution. This programme started out in December 2015 with the Urgent Furniture Workshop involving the residents under the guidance of artist and educator Carlos Granados, who collectively designed and built the furniture for the new coworking area at the Academy. During the months of February and March 2016, four sessions of the Study 7 programme took place in this new space: ‘round-trip’ meetings on the Italian artistic scene, to which we invited four curators, who in turn invited artists based in Rome to discuss concrete aspects of the reality of contemporary art in the city. The guests were Michela Tornielli of Crestvolant with Thomas Hutton, Cecilia Canziani with Alessandro Piangiamore, Francesco Buonerba with Leonardo Petrucci and Stefano Collicelli Cagol with Nasrin Mohiti and Giusseppe Grant from the Orizzontale project. In collaboration with the BilboLbul team –Festival Internazionale di Fumetto, Bologna– on 26 May we inaugurated, as part of its Primavera/Estate programme, Parco Falafel, Martin López Lam’s solo exhibition. To coincide with this exhibition we organised a meeting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna on comics and