Sublime Cliché

Just visited 'Sublime Cliché' at MACRO - Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, part of the Festival of Foreign Academies and Cultural Institutes in Rome. Curated by Saverio Verini, the exhibition offers a multilayered view of the Eternal City through works by international artists in residence. Rome’s myths, contradictions, and everyday realities emerge across installations, videos, and sculptures, turning even the most familiar clichés into something poetic and new.

My attention was captured by an installation titled 'Tutte le strade', by Evangelia Kranioti. The work addresses the Mediterranean migration crisis through the lens of mythology. Filmed across various Roman locations, it shows migrants carrying casts of classical-era heads, mobile herms evoking Hermes, the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology, and guardian of passages and borders.Set to the music of Handel’s 'Giulio Cesare in Egitto', the piece becomes a procession where history is not only a message, but also a burden, and even a riddle.

As the voice repeats the names of Roman roads, one can’t help but ask: all roads lead to Rome, but do we ever learn from the weight of the past?