FOROF launches a Special Episode with a new performance by London-based artist Florence Peake. In collaboration with Richard Saltoun Gallery, it presents Interior Pull ahead of the official opening of the upcoming exhibition and events programme.
FOROF is a unique reality in Rome. Founded by Giovanna Caruso Fendi, it opened its doors last February. A cultural space and Benefit Corporation, FOROF brings together Archaeology and Contemporary Art. It is located in the historical Palazzo Roccagiovine, right next to the Trajan Column. Inside, you can still admire the original marbled floors and the rests of the Eastern apse of the ancient Basilica Ulpia, a unique place which can only be visited here.
Not only archaeology: the space promotes a continuous dialogue with contemporary artists which are invited to create site-specific exhibitions that deeply interact with the space. It’s an interesting challenge, as artists have to both converse with the antiquities that pervade the lower levels of FOROF (and that are everywhere felt on its outside), and shape new, innovative spaces. Artists also have carte blanche when it comes to choosing the various events, or ‘episodes’, that will animate their exhibition.
It is with such an episode that FOROF pre-announces its future programme, starting this November with ‘Sortilegio’ by Alex Cecchetti, a specially commissioned site-specific installation. The episode will see British performer, choreographer and visual artist Florence Peake endeavour in the collective performance Interior Pull. the artist, helped by the performers Vanshika Agrawal, Flaminia Celata e Aica Huck, will create sculptural shells from the bodies of the participating actors.
Peake’s work is rooted in the moving body, physicality and materiality. Her approach to materials and to the body is at the same time sensual and witty, expressive and rigorous. Recalling past burying rituals, the artist will wrap a body in clay and then extract it through an encasement process, maintaining a strong bond with both the sensuousness and the materiality of a body. The resulting sculpture will be exhibited in the space until 8 October alongside other works by Peake. The sensory emotions the artist experienced during the process will instead be captured and transformed into vocal scores.
The choice of the “the extraction process” for the creation of this sculpture is not casual. It reminds, in fact, the excavation of archaeological finds. The wrapped body coming out of the clay, then, becomes a metaphor for the buried artifacts that are brought back to life. Yet, in light of Peake’s typically provocative language, there is also a reference to the mining industries that are depleting the earth’s resources after having exploited them, and where the human body becomes a metaphor of extracted resources.
As Caruso Fendi, the Founding Director of FOROF, states:
‘This Special Episode, while diverging from the programme of the upcoming season, is an opportunity to reaffirm the courageous and free identity of our cultural space.’
FOROF X Florence Peake FOROF, Foro Traiano 1, Rome
