iMAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Arts · Flaminio
NATURE: Tatiana Bilbao Estudio. Campo aperto
Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao turns a MAXXI hall into a landscape to explore and inhabit, inspired by the Mesoamerican ball game and built for connection.
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A Mexican architect has built a ramp inside a Zaha Hadid museum and wants you to climb it. Tatiana Bilbao fills the Gian Ferrari hall with two opposing slopes and a central tower rising towards the ceiling and the light. You can scale a ramp, sit on it or find shelter in a corner. The tower is the quiet part, for stepping out of the game.
The starting point is pelota, the Mesoamerican ballgame that was also a ritual tied to religion, social order and fertility. Bilbao's idea is that the court turned players into a community, so the hall has no set route. A smaller space holds two play-themed projects from MAXXI's collection, by BBPR and Ugo La Pietra. Il Giornale dell'Architettura called it "accessible and playful". In a city of velvet ropes, here the exhibit is meant to be climbed.
It's one hall, reached from the Sophie Calle show in Gallery 2. A standard MAXXI ticket covers it: €15, €14 online, free under 18. Closed Mondays.
Look for
The two slopes
Two large inclined planes face each other across the hall, and you are free to climb them, sit on them or tuck into them.
The central tower
Look for the tower rising towards the museum ceiling and the light, which Bilbao built as the still place to withdraw from the movement around it.
The collage of collages
Coming in from Gallery 2, you meet a large collage of images, drawings and visual references that sums up how the studio works.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Rainy Days
- Small Kids
Skip if
You want objects to look at: this is one hall built for climbing and moving around.
With kids
Children can climb the ramps, and under-18s get in free. On 28 November at 4:30pm a 90-minute family workshop in the installation, in Italian, takes ages 5 to 11 for €9 per child.
Also at MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Arts
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- NATURE: Tatiana Bilbao Estudio. Campo apertoFoto © Vincenzo Labellarte, courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
- L'archivio racconta. Memorie di famiglia nei documenti della persecuzione antiebraicaCourtesy of Museo di Roma (Palazzo Braschi)
- Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. MetamorphosisCourtesy of Galleria Borghese
- Cambellotti. Tutto diventa formaWork by Duilio Cambellotti; photo Sailko / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century ArtsAlbertSpiegelei, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0