The volume originates from the exhibition of the same name that the Fondazione Merz, in collaboration with the MAO Museum of Oriental Art in Turin, dedicated to the Franco-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada, winner of the fourth edition of the Mario Merz Prize. The exhibition, which ran from 20 February to 18 May 2025, curated by Davide Quadrio with Giulia Turconi, referred in its title to the agricultural practice of removing wilted flowers from a plant to stimulate its growth. Taking up the metaphor of a return to the essential in order to release new energies, the exhibition featured the most representative works of Yto Barrada's artistic research, including films, sculptures, installations, textiles and prints, some of which were created especially for the occasion. The book includes an introduction by Beatrice Merz, texts by the exhibition curators and an essay by Myriam Ben Salah, independent curator who will curate the French Pavilion at the next Venice Art Biennale dedicated to Yto Barrada. The volume contains a rich collection of images of the exhibition.

Yto Barrada, born in Paris in 1971, lives and works between Tangier and New York. Through an archival approach and connected to public actions, Barrada's installations reveal lesser-known stories, reveal the prevalence of fiction in institutionalised narratives, and celebrate everyday forms of claiming autonomy. Her work includes different media such as photography, film, sculpture, installation, and engraving. She is the founder of the Cinémathèque de Tanger, a cultural centre that has become a historic institution bringing together the Moroccan community to celebrate local and international cinema. Yto Barrada has won numerous awards including the 2019 Roy R. Neuberger Prize, the 2016 Tiger Award and a nomination for the 2016 Prix Marcel Duchamp in Paris, the 2015 Abraaj Group Art Prize and the 2011 Deutsche Guggenheim Artist of the Year award. Barrada's work is included in the collections of major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum (New York), Tate Modern (London), MoMA (New York), Guggenheim (Berlin), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museo de Sao Paolo and the Venice Biennales 2007 and 2011.

Luigi Mainolfi (Rotondi, Feb. 16, 1948) is an Italian sculptor who is internationally known as one of the main representatives of the so-called post-conceptual sculpture, which was imposed at the beginning of the 1980s.

Over twenty sculptures by Luigi Mainolfi, created between 1978 and 2020, were housed in the Court of Honor, the Grand Parterre of the Gardens of the Reggia di Venaria and the Chapel of St. Hubert in the summer of 2024.

From the zoomorphic-themed sculptures comes the title, Bestiary, which refers to medieval illuminated codices illustrated with real and imaginary animals, but also to the fantastic zoology of Jorge Luis Borges. This is a recurring theme in Mainolfi, already the author of Bestiario del Sole with its polychrome metamorphic creatures between myth and fairy tale. Mainolfi's Bestiary settles into the architecture, invades the green geometries of the gardens and comes into contact with the living presence of fawns and other wildlife in the park and surrounding forest. Fantastic and mutant creatures, in dialogue with the fairy tales and modeled and painted animals of the Reggia di Venaria, entirely dedicated in the 17th century to the myth of Diana, goddess of the moon and the hunt.

Luigi Mainolfi (1948) practices sculpture made with natural materials such as terracotta, plaster, wood, lava stone, or bronze castings, elaborating his own personal language through which he evokes the popular cultures of our country.

Exhibition: Mainolfi. Sculptures. Bestiary
La Venaria Reale, Venaria, Turin, 21th June 2024 - 10th November 2024

The Garden of Resonances invites visitors to walk among eras that mirror each other, forms that seek each other out, artists separated by centuries yet engaged in intense dialogue, as if history were not a line but an echo, a garden in which every creative gesture still vibrates among the branches of time.

The exhibition offers an innovative dialogue between the works preserved in the storerooms of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna – many of which are rarely seen by the public – and the research of sixteen contemporary artists active on the Bologna scene. The connections that emerge in the spaces of the Pinacoteca and MAMbo are symbolic and formal resonances, capable of crossing eras, languages and sensibilities.

The “garden” evoked in the title is a cultural and conceptual image: a space of relationships, tensions and harmonies, in which the human and the natural intertwine and mirror each other: ancient bonds that the processes set in motion by the industrial revolution have caused us to lose sight of, but which still echo in our language, starting with the term “culture”, from the Latin colere, “to cultivate”.

An exhibition that invites visitors to question the meaning of the collection, memory and transformation.

Il Giardino delle Risonanze's artists: Josef Albers, Anna Tappari, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Jean Couy, Cuoghi Corsello, Anton Raphael Mengs, Giorgio Alvise Baffo, Eva Marisaldi, Enrico Serotti, Alessandro Algardi, Francis Bacon, Zapruder, Giorgio De Chirico, Felice Giani, Filippo Scandellari, Daniel Seghers, Erasmus Quellinus Il Giovane, Arianna Zama, Giorgio Morandi, Alessandra Dragoni, Giuseppe De Nittis, Luigi Venturi, Riccardo Baruzzi, Ubaldo Gandolfi, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Emma Masut, Domenico Maria Viani, Italo Zuffi, Hans Fronius, Fanny & Alexander, Luigi Serra, Paolo Chiasera, Otto Dix, Bruno Munari, Jean Arp, Kurt Regschek, Zimmerfrei, Alessandro Tiarini, Tommaso Silvestroni, Valentino Solmi, Filippo Tappi, Maestro Vpr, Federico Zamboni, Guido Cagnacci, Emidio Clementi, Stefano Pilia, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Savinio, Antonio Muzzi, Enrico Romolo

Within the Echos project, a pas de deux between visual art and theatre, the two artists, Alfredo Jaar and Romeo Castellucci, one for each of the two languages, find themselves answering the same questions, as if in front of an imaginary mirror. The structure of the double, of the mirror in fact, reflects and ideally crosses the different looks, approaches and results that find - not surprisingly - surprising commonalities. Alfredo Jaar and Romeo Castellucci, leading figures in contemporary creation, are the protagonists of the first volume.
(On the occasion of the Festival delle Colline Torinesi in world premiere currently available on the hopefulmonster website and in the bookshop of the Fondazione Merz in Turin.)

Romeo Castellucci, director, creator of sets, lighting and costumes, is among the most significant authors of contemporary theatre. A graduate in painting and set design from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, in 1981 he co-founded the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. In 2005 he was director of the theatre section of the Venice Biennale and in 2008 he was associate artist of the 62nd edition of the Festival d'Avignon. Winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2013, the following year he was awarded an honorary degree in music and theatre by the University of Bologna. Among his most recent creations: the plays The Third Reich (2020), Bros (2021), the direction of the operas Pavane für Prometheus IX (2021) and Bluebeard's Castle (2022), the public action Milan (2021) and the installation Tomorrow (2022).

Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean artist, architect and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. He studied architecture during the dictatorial regime in Chile and moved to New York in 1982. His work focuses on socio-political issues, the semiotics of images, themes of utopia and failure. He has participated in the Venice Art Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), the São Paulo Biennale (1987, 1989, 2010, 2021) and Documenta (1987, 2002). He received the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in 2020. His works have been exhibited worldwide.

The first volume of the catalogue raisonné of the artist's work is dedicated to igloos. Based on the exhaustive research conducted by art historian Maddalena Disch, it is an editorial project of the Fondazione Merz, with the support of the Scientific and Editorial Committee composed of Mariano Boggia, Luisa Borio, Richard Flood, Beatrice Merz, Frances Morris and Vicente Todolì. The volume is introduced by a text by Beatrice Merz and an essay by Maddalena Disch. Each work is presented with an analytical historical and biographical profile supported by accurate bibliographical references and an exhaustive photographic repertoire.

The volume includes texts by the artist and interviews with Jean-Christophe Ammann, Mirella Bandini, Sergio Barana, Matteo Benvenuti, Achille Bonito Oliva, Germano Celant, Bruno Corà, Danilo Eccher, Corinna Ferrari, Piero Gilardi, Marlis Grüterich, Claudio Guarda, Michael Haerdter, Richard Koshalek, Corrado Levi, Salvatore Licitra, Beatrice Merz, Linda Morris, Fumio Nanjo, Suzanne Pagé, Gabriele Perretta, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Mila Pistoi, Barbara Reise, Giuseppe Risso, Harald Szeemann, Laura Tansini, Caroline Tisdall, Tommaso Trini, Paolo Vagheggi, Gemma Vincenzini and Francesco Vincitorio; as well as a biographical note and bibliography edited by the Merz Archive.

The book, consisting of 560 pages and 350 images, is published in two editions, one in Italian and one in English.

The project is realised thanks to the support of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture within the framework of the Italian Council programme (2023).

In Turin, for the first time, Khalil Rabah's Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind takes the form of an archaeological site, in which the visitor is invited to immerse himself in a historical narrative rendered through testimonies and clues. In the spaces of the Fondazione Merz, the artist challenges the role of the museum as a mere container and focuses on art as a tool for the interpretation and correction of history. Khalil Rabah's artistic practice ranges between painting, sculpture and installation to construct a lucid and careful analysis of history and its interpretations, questioning their narrative modes and the perception they generate. Fundamental themes such as change, memory and identity intersect in his work, creating new ways of representing communities and relationships. ways of representing communities and the relationships that make them up.

The catalogue accompanies the project conceived by Khalil Rabah for the Fondazione Merz and was created as an extension of the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (PMNHH). Developed as a nomadic museum institution that the artist inaugurated in 2003, Rabah's museum, which includes departments such as geology, botany and palaeontology, has seen several iterations around the world and is identified as a project in constant evolution.

Khalil Rabah is a Palestinian conceptual artist born in Jerusalem in 1961. He studied Architecture and Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Arlington and has resided in the United States for over a decade. His most recent solo exhibitions include Casa Árabe, Madrid (2016); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2015); e-flux, New York (2013); and Beirut Art Center (2012). As well as major group exhibitions, including Manifesta 12 Palermo (2018); Sharjah Biennial (2017); Marrakech Biennial (2016); Kochi-Muziris Biennial (2014); Thessaloniki Biennial (2013); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2012); Mathaf, Doha (2010); and Venice Biennale (2009). Rabah is the initiator and artistic director of the Riwaq Biennale and a co-founder of the Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem. From 2011 to 2015 he served on the curricular committee of Ashkal Alwan's Home Workspace programme in Beirut, Lebanon.