Pompei@Madre. Materia Archelogica

The exhibition Pompei@Madre. Materia Archeologica (“Pompei@Madre. Archaeological Matter“) – is based on a rigorous research activity resulting from unprecedented institutional collaboration between the Madre and the Archaeological Park / Pompeii Superintendence, the most important archaeological Italian site and one of the most visited worldwide.

Based on a comparison and discussion of respective research methodologies, disciplinary fields and collections, Pompei@Madre. Materia Archeologica consists in studying the potential multiple relationships between archaeological heritage and artistic research, creating a dialogue between extraordinary but little-known and rarely displayed archaeological material from Pompeii and modern and contemporary artworks.

The exhibition, presented in a large part of the exhibition spaces of the Madre museum, involves more than 90 modern and contemporary artists and intellectuals, from Johann Wolfgang Goethe to Johann Joachim Winckelmann, from François-René de Chateaubriand to Le Corbusier, from Fausto Melotti and Andy Warhol to Mark Dion, Jimmie Durham, Laure Prouvost, Adrián Villar Rojas.

Through its inter-institutional structure, Pompei@Madre. Materia Archeologica reveals and displays the potential links between the various cultural institutions operating, with their own respective epistemic logic, in Campania region and, more generally, in the Mediterranean. Both areas are palimpsests whose natural and cultural biodiversity can be explored critically in the exhibition. The project is therefore designed to be a potential catalyst of a hypothetically integrated cultural, disciplinary and institutional system that creates itineraries in which – through different eras, subjects, methods, disciplines and institutions – it is possible to trace over thirty centuries of contemporary life of Campania Felix and Mediterranean culture.