Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck

The Art Quadriennale is the only institutional exhibition devoted to contemporary Italian art. After eight years it is back at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome with the title Altri tempi, altri miti [Other times, other myths].

This year’s exhibition aims to map out contemporary visual arts in Italy and is promoted and organized by the Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma and the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo. It will feature ten exhibition sections developed by eleven curators and ninety-nine artists, with one hundred and fifty artworks produced especially for the event or of recent production.

La democrazia in America
Curated by Luigi Fassi

This exhibition project came about as the result of an urgent need shared with a group of Italian artists born in the 1970s and 1980s to reflect on certain problematic aspects of the history of contemporary Italy, from its uncertain development as a democratic republic during the post-war period, to its stop-start relationship with the history of united Europe, its instability and the complex geopolitical transformations currently taking place.

The exhibition project intends to explore some of these crucial aspects and is based upon the shared reading, both by the artists and the curator, of a particular source of inspiration for reflecting indirectly on the country, the essay Democracy in America published by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835.