Oracles Beyond the Sea

Oracles Beyond the Sea stems from a desire to evoke the experiences lived by the fellows of Villa Medici during their time in Rome, as a prelude to its concluding act: the exhibition to which we have been invited to contribute as curators. An undertaking made all the more challenging by the fact that, at the time of writing, most of the works are still in the midst of their making. The exhibition thus takes shape as an attempt to bring together, within a fluid and unpredictable space, a heterogeneous constellation of voices. In this sense, it becomes an invitation to the residents to come together in a shared ritual, through the circulation of genealogies, practices, and lines of inquiry that are at times profoundly different from one another, sustained by a constant tension between the personal and the collective, the poetic and the political. It is also an invitation to the public to let things unfold, imagining each of the works on display as an oracle—a sibyl to be consulted without expecting unequivocal answers, receiving them instead as visions, omens, or questions capable of transforming the way we see. It is a call to cultivate a different logic of reality, to move between worlds, and to enter a space where every gesture and every story becomes a song, a sign, or a threshold.

Fellows 2025-2026 of Villa Medici:
Alia Bengana, Arianna Brunori, Diaty Diallo, Marin Fouqué, Elitza Gueorguieva, Camille Lévy Sarfati, Hugo Lindenberg, Giulia Lorusso, Paul Maheke, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, Randa Maroufi, Farnaz Modarresifar, Baptiste Pinteaux, Enrique Ramírez, Ben Russell, Thu-Van Tran

Curators: Imma Tralli, Roberto Pontecorvo

Associated curator: Camille Coschieri

Guest artists:
Nastasia Alberti, Alma Chaouachi, Adrienne Drake, Cécile Guilbert, Tamsin Hong, Karim Kattan, Maylis de Kerangal, Laurie Laufer, Anne Montaron, Eddy de Pretto, Bernard Quirot, Myriam Rabah-Konaté, Georgia René-Worms, Luisa Santacesaria, Öykü Sofuoğlu, Francesco Vitali Rosati