“Home Beirut. Sounding the Neighbors” at MAXXI, Rome, 2017-2018
Courtesy: Fondazione MAXXI. Photo Musacchio Ianniello

Pelagica is pleased to invite you on April 13, 2018 at 18.00 in via Principe Eugenio 42, Milan to a public talk “Pelagica Orations – Home Beirut SOUNDING THE NEIGHBORS”. A public conversation with Laura Lecce, founder of Pelagica, Hou Hanru, artistic director Maxxi Museum of Rome and Giulia Ferracci resident curator at Maxxi.

The journey that the Maxxi Museum is taking across the Mediterranean, after Teheran and Istanbul, this time the leg is Beirut. The Lebanese capital has been chosen for an incredible tale by thirty-six artists, architects and contemporary creatives on display in
“Home Beirut SOUNDING THE NEIGHBORS” from 15 November 2017 to 20 May 2018 at Maxxi Museum in Rome, Italy.

Beirut, an emerging and resplendent city that has recently spread in the world scene, is a city that lives an incredible and recent expansion, and that has generated a real extended area of new energy, on the easternmost shore of Mediterranean. An anguished city with big traumas, where many different human realities coexist today. A shelt-city of fleeing people, and an hometown for populations who have lived there for thousands of decades, an exuberant landscape, still at the center of the flows of displacement and  contemporary migrations

Hou Hanru, critic and curator, graduated at the Central Academy of fine Arts in Beijing. From 2006 to 2012 he was “Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs” and “Chair of Exhibition and Museum Studies” at the San Francisco Art Institute.
He has curated numerous exhibitions all over the world and several Biennials, including the Venice Biennale, the French Pavilion in 1999, the exhibition Z.O.U – Zone of Urgency in 2003 and the Chinese Pavilion in 2007; the Shanghai Biennial in 2000, that of Tirana in 2005, that of Istanbul in 2007 and that of Lyon in 2009. He has been a consultant in numerous international institutions, including Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York ). Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art (Kumamoto, Japan), Deutsche Bank Collection (Frankfurt), and has been part of many international awards juries, including Hugo Boss Prize (Guggenheim Museum), Chinese Contemporary Art Award (Beijing), Prix International ‘Art Contemporain de la Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco (Monaco). She regularly collaborates with international art magazines, including “Flash Art International”, “Art in America”, “Art Asia Pacific”, “Yishu”, “Art- It “. From December 2013 he is Artistic Director of MAXXI.

Giulia Ferracci collaborated with MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (2004-2006) and Ministry of Cultural Heritage – Darc General Directorate for the quality and protection of the Architecture of Contemporary Art (2006-2009). She is a curator at MAXXI where she has been working since 2010. Among the various projects and exhibitions that have been followed are Gino De Dominicis. The immortal (2010); Indian Highway (2011); MAXXI Award (2012 and 2014), William Kentridge. Vertical Thinking (2012); Clemens von Wedemeyer. The Cast (2013); Huang Yong Ping. Serpent (2014); The Independent (2015).