Memory Game

The starting point for the exhibition Memory Game at Villa Lontana is a nineteenth century chest of drawers comprising numerous colored marble samples used during the Roman Empire. The object is part of the Fondazione Santarelli Collection, which is treated as an archive to develop the curatorial projects of Villa Lontana. Each sample comes from a different quarry and location within the extended colonies of the Roman Empire: Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Libya, Macedonia, Spain, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey. The chest of drawers, together with the Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica Treccani are presented in Villa Lontana's garage space alongside works by Tauba Auerbach, Cyprien Gaillard, Susan Hiller, Thomas Hutton, John Latham, Charlotte Moth, Rosalind Nashashibi + Lucy Skaer, Olu Ogunnaike and Giorgio Orbi.

The chest of drawers is an object that provokes us to think about geographies and memory games in conjunction with the political, economic and geographic expansion of the ancient Roman Empire. “Those who still wander around the Palatine Hill, the Forums, the ruins of the baths and other monuments, will see small flakes and fragments of various kinds of colored marble, standing out among the stones and the loose earth, especially after the rain. These fragments are not stones originating from the soil of Rome, but come from all parts of the Empire." This passage comes from the seminal text Marmora Romana, written by Raniero Gnoli in 1971 after his visit to all the main places and monuments of the Mediterranean basin where there are ancient marbles, retracing the paths of Faustino Corsi.

Memory Game presents different ways in which contemporary artists respond to geography, history, trade and economies: craft, tradition and re-invention, geopolitical structures and networks of power, transaction and exchange, economies and histories.

• http://www.villalontana.it/memorygame/