Domestic exercises: Sull'Essere Ospite

curated by Giulia Palladini

with Liryc Dela Cruz and Tara Fatehi

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The idea of ‘domestic exercise’ challenges common understandings of ‘the domestic’ as something given, naturalised, inherently private, associated solely to the domain of necessity, and devoid of political potential and implications. The domestics constitute a field of struggle and imagination, where forms of life can be exercised and invented daily: ways of coexisting, of dealing with each other’s waste, with each other’s pleasures, each other’s memories and miseries.

The public program ‘domestic exercises’, curated by Giulia Palladini in dialogue with the Villa Romana team, interrogates the Villa as a domestic space hosting overlapping modes of coexistence between workers, inhabitants, guests, all with different temporalities, responsibilities, roles and power within the house. Playing with the Italian word ‘ospite’ – curiously meaning both ‘the guest’ and ‘the host’ – invited artists Liryc Dela Cruz and Tara Fatehi will be hosted and host, together with Giulia, one day of playful reflection on the domestics, articulated by means of two ‘exercises’: a conversation conducted by Liryc during a slow and leisurely preparation of food (involving a group of 15 participants) and a performance lecture by Tara in the evening, focusing on family archives, personal memories, and the imagination of the domestic.

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Liryc Dela Cruz: 12 pm – 4 pm

‍Tara Fatehi: 6pm

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