But in the eastern outskirts of Rome, on Via Prenestina to be precise, sits a museum which houses both artwork and people, the two protecting each other.
This unique place is called the Metropoliz Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere (MAAM) which will be at the centre of a Q&A evening at the Italian Cultural Institute (IIC) on Friday.
Entitled ‘From Salami to Art’, the event will feature anthropologist and curator Giorgio de Finis (who is also the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (MACRO)) and Roman artist Veronica Montanino.
The event’s title refers to the museum’s fascinating story: a former salami factory, the building has been occupied by families of migrants and squatters since 2009.
Around 200 people, including 70 children, call the space home.
From impoverished Italians to Northern Africans, South Americans, Roma and Sinti people, the museum’s residents live together in what they call a “comunità meticcia”, or mixed community that is known as Metropoliz.
This melting pot of ethnicities, cultures and languages attracted Mr de Finis’ attention, along with that of fellow anthropologist and filmmaker Fabrizio Boni.
The pair collaborated to explore the community in a documentary entitled ‘Space Metropoliz’.
Despite initial resistance to what Mr de Finis described as a “peaceful invasion”, Metropoliz’ residents became involved in the work and contributed to the birth of an artistic movement which would in turn breathe life into MAAM.
“The rationale underpinning this idea is that existence doesn’t just have to do with material survival, but also with imagination, the energy of beauty, utopia, and the sense of hope that art has brought to this place,” Ms Montanino, one of the first artists to become involved in the project, said.
“In the long term, we will discover the results of this project in terms of its impact on the residents’ lives by observing what type of adults the children who are living this experience will grow into. Perhaps we should consider them the real protagonists in this artistic and anthropological experiment.”
The building’s first space to be “invaded” by art was the play area.
The work was created by Ms Montanino, who is renowned for her vibrant and colourful masterpieces and was contacted by Mr de Finis in 2012 when some artwork already occupied MAAM but the museum didn’t yet exist.
Ms Montanino explained that the decision to begin with the play area was the result of a specific desire to begin with the children.
“Children are fragile in the face of the adult world and the social sphere, but also ‘powerful’ when it comes to imagination, interpersonal skills, and their physiological adaptation to towards change.”
Featuring bright colours and playful and “wild” elements, the artist’s style suits the playroom’s atmosphere perfectly.
“The colour trickles down the wall and onto the ground, inviting children and anyone else to walk all over it and enter the artwork,” Ms Montanino said.
“It’s a beginning which demonstrates a direction, inviting people to overcome the division between art and life. Only if these things start to be together again, as they were in the beginning when living and painting were one in a cave, can we begin to think about the ontological dimension of making art and being human.”
Mr de Finis compares Metropoliz to a “contemporary Lascaux”, where art and life are intertwined.
Referring to MAAM’s aims, the anthropologist mentioned “creating a barricade of art to defend its inhabitants; the expulsion of 200 people from their homes would be communicated with a short report entitled The Area of the Former Fiorucci Reclaimed, while the destruction of 500 artworks would be equal to those who send bulldozers to Talibans who cannonade Buddhas in Afghanistan”.
But art as a “barricade” isn't the only aim, and Ms Montanino highlighted the importance of the “uselessness” of art beyond its political function.
“If we lose the non-functionality and uselessness of art, there’s nothing that can tell us of a dimension other than the homo oeconomicus of which the ideology of homo homini lupus is the direct consequence,” she explained.
“So it becomes a ‘normal’ destiny for the poor and the weak to be exploited, crushed and swept away…But if it is also human nature to do useless things, then there is some hope.”
And so art becomes a means of protection and resistance, but also art as an end in itself, as an essential component of the human being, and as a collective and participatory work.
Based on this concept, the new definition of “museum” proposed by MAAM has generated an “earthquake” that (not without controversy) began in the suburbs and can now be felt in Rome’s city centre.
In fact, last December saw the presentation of MACRO Asilo, an experimental project led by Mr de Finis at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome.
The project is inspired by MAAM’s experimental, communal model.
For 15 months from October, MACRO will suspend exhibitions and transform into “a hospitable place, a house, a square [where] anyone who self-identifies as an artist” is invited to contribute their work.
During the Q&A evening at the IIC, Mr de Finis will discuss the ways in which the dialogic and grass-root experience of MAAM is the basis of his vision for his MACRO Asilo project.
The event will be facilitated by Dr Malcolm Angelucci from The University of Melbourne’s School of Languages and Linguistics, an interesting choice in light of what Ms Montanino describes as the “double multilingualism” of Metropoliz.
“One refers to the languages spoken by the various nationalities [living at the museum] and the other to the many languages present in the art, all inevitably subject to contamination,” she added.
The event ‘From Salami to Art’ will take place at Elm Tree House in South Yarra, on Friday, April 20 from 6:30 pm. Entry is free. Follow the link to book.
