At Giovanna Caruso Fendi’s FOROF, Rome’s Past Finds New Context in the Contemporary |
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At Giovanna Caruso Fendi’s FOROF, Rome’s Past Finds New Context in the Contemporary
Built into the ruins of the Basilica Ulpia—where enslaved Romans once regained their freedom—the space is redefining how the art world can and should engage with the ancient world.
Most people go to Rome for its ancient history, but the city offers many possible journeys through different eras, from the Roman Empire and earlier periods to the Baroque, the modern and the contemporary. When it comes to the interaction between contemporary art and the layers of the past embedded in the city’s terrain, the art space FOROF is probably the finest example—both for its founding history and its programming. It brings contemporary art into the heart of ancient Rome, creating opportunities for fertile dialogue not only between different eras and aesthetics but around themes that recur throughout the history of human civilization.
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When excavations begin for a new development project in Rome, it is almost certain that ruins will be found. So it was hardly a surprise that when Alda Fendi acquired Palazzo Roccagiovine, directly in front of Trajan’s Column, the past resurfaced as soon as renovation began. The building housed a printing workshop for years, but once excavation started to transform the space into the future home of Alda Fendi Esperimenti, ancient marble flooring began to emerge. Fendi’s foundation eventually found its home elsewhere, in the Velabro neighborhood, in a complex of historic buildings restored by Jean Nouvel and now transformed into the luxury aparthotel and cultural complex Rhinocheros.
This delicate site next to Trajan’s Column was taken over by her daughter, Giovanna Caruso Fendi, who launched FOROF in the remains of what had once been an important part of the Basilica Ulpia inside Trajan’s Forum—one of the symbolic centers of Roman imperial power, designed by Apollodorus of Damascus. Its underground spaces preserve an extraordinary portion of the eastern apse with the original polychrome marble floors—”giallo antico,” “pavonazzetto” and “verde africano”—and, most importantly, the place where the manumissio took place, the public act through which enslaved people regained their freedom.
“What struck me from the beginning was not only the archaeological value of the site, but its capacity to still speak to the present,” Caruso Fendi tells Observer during a walkthrough of the space. “Descending into the foundations of the Basilica Ulpia means........