Invitation to the press conference “Eppur si muove – And yet it moves! Villa Massimo visits the Japanisches Palais”

Eppur si muove – und sie bewegt sich doch! Villa Massimo zu Gast im Japanischen Palais

From 24 June to 25 September 2022, the eighteen winners of the Villa Massimo’s Rome Prize in 2020/21 and 2021/22 will be presenting the works they created in Rome at the Japanisches Palais. The artworks in the exhibition “Eppur si muove – And yet it moves! Villa Massimo visits the Japanisches Palais” mostly came about during the recent period of seclusion and isolation, and tackle the vulnerability of individuals, societies and the natural world in which we live. The duo Prinz Gholam, winners of the Rome Prize, will also be performing at the Kleiner Schlosshof (Small Palace Courtyard) at the Residenzschloss on 22 June.

The exceptional circumstances gave the artists time and space to think about the social, political, cultural, psychological and even ecological state of affairs. That is reflected in their works. What effects did the pandemic have on social and ecological cohesion, how can we learn new ways of getting on together, and what positive forces can be found in the crisis? High-calibre international artists from the fields of the visual arts, architecture, literature and music will be turning the Japanisches Palais into an arena for debate on the period we live in and the question of how the world will change. The title echoes the defiant comment by the physicist Galileo Galilei, who was forced to stand before the Pope in Rome and recant his discovery that we Earth-dwellers are not the centre of the universe.

Alongside the paintings, drawings, photographs, videos and installations shown in the exhibition itself, the programme will also feature concerts at Hellerau Festival Theatre and the Tonne jazz club, performance art in the Neptunbrunnen fountain and readings at the Japanisches Palais.

The Rome Prize, bestowed by the Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo, is considered the most important award for German artists, or artists working in Germany on foreign study visits. Villa Massimo was founded in 1910 by Eduard Arnhold and passed on to the German Emperor for the purpose of supporting artists. Today, it belongs to the Federal Republic of Germany and falls under the remit of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Every year, the Rome Prize is awarded to nine individual artists or artist collectives in the fields of architecture, the visual arts, musical composition and literature. The aim is to promote inspiration and artistic guidance without financial constraints, thanks to a ten-month residency at Villa Massimo in Rome.

Villa Massimo has presented works over a single evening at the Gropius Bau, Berlin for more than 13 years; in 2020 it was a guest for three days at the Berlin KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Since 2021, the Deutsche Akademie Rom has been pursuing the idea of holding extensive exhibitions of works by the previous year’s winners of the Rome Prize in the different German Länder. Schloss Neuhardenberg, in Brandenburg, set things in motion as a local partner in 2021. This partnership with the SKD will be Villa Massimo’s most extensive appearance in Germany to date. Over more than three months, winners from 2020/21 and 2021/22 will be presenting their works.

Winners of the Rome Prize in 2020/21 and 2021/22

Performance by Prinz Gholam: “The Survivor and the Dreamer”, 6 p.m. on Wednesday, 22 June 2022, Kleiner Schlosshof, Residenzschloss Dresden

As well as exhibiting in the Japanisches Palais, the Rome Prize-winning duo Prinz Gholam will also be appearing in the Kleiner Schlosshof at Dresden’s Residenzschloss. The performance “The Survivor and the Dreamer”, taking place at 6 p.m. on 22 June 2022, was created specifically for this location. The second performance will take place at 5.30 p.m. on 25 September. Between these two dates, an installation will be set up at the Kleiner Schlosshof featuring the paper masks used in the piece. These were inspired, among other things, by works from the collection of the Kupferstich-Kabinett. The curator is Björn Egging, who curates for the SKD’s Kupferstich-Kabinett.

For “The Survivor and the Dreamer”, Prinz Gholam sought inspiration in Tennessee Williams’ 1953 play “Camino Real”, which focuses on the hero’s fate in the surreal, hostile environment of a strange town. The performance is inspired by the setting of the play – a shadowy place at the end of a street, surrounded by luxury hotels and dollar-a-night dosshouses – and by the idea of literary figures being included in the story’s cast. The masks exhibited in the palace courtyard, with their drawn-on faces, mostly represent characters borrowed from images from art history. The title of the performance comes from two secondary characters in the play.

The performances by Prinz Gholam and the mask installation at the Kleiner Schlosshof are funded by the Foundation for Arts and Music of Dresden and the Kupferstich-Kabinett friends’ association.