STATES OF UNCERTAIN DOMESTICITIES

PRIMAROSA CESARINI SFORZA, INES FONTENLA, THORSTEN KIRCHHOFF, DANIELA MONACI, LUANA PERILLI

Opening Saturday, October 3rd 2026, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

until November 27th 2026

Curated by Ada Lombardi

EMMEOTTO ARTE | Via di San Pantaleo, 66 (piano 1) - 00186 Roma

IIn parallel with, and in dialogue with, the exhibition of the same title at the Museo Carlo Bilotti – Aranciera di Villa Borghese, Emmeotto Arte presents a focused selection of works by five artists who live and work in Rome: Primarosa Cesarini Sforza, Ines Fontenla, Thorsten Kirchhoff, Daniela Monaci, and Luana Perilli.
An international travelling project that, following its presentations in Berlin and Brno, arrives in Rome with a new iteration devoted to the themes of home and dwelling, States of Uncertain Domesticities approaches domestic space through a feminist, political, and social lens. At Emmeotto Arte, the exhibition expands this investigation through a dialogue between contemporary artistic practices and Rome ’s layered cultural heritage, foregrounding the home not simply as a physical structure, but as a “place” — a space of memory, belonging, identity, and care.
Curated by Ada Lombardi, the exhibition reflects on what it means to inhabit a home today, at a time shaped by migration, environmental crisis, and profound social transformations. Rather than considering domesticity as a stable or reassuring condition, the exhibition explores it as a fluid and uncertain territory, continuously reshaped by historical, ecological, political, and personal forces.
As Ada Lombardi writes in the catalogue essay accompanying the exhibition, to be presented in October:
“The exhibition States of Uncertain Domesticities begins with the archetype of the house and follows its many transformations. Although the works address different aspects, together they construct a scenario that speaks of the present and, perhaps, of the changes that are already taking shape.
Among these is care. Many artists identify it as a fundamental element of the home and as an agent of identity. Yet within capitalist society, care remains marginalized, relegated to an invisible activity that is often unrecognized…”
In Daniela Monaci ’s installation Frammenti di un discorso d ’amore (Fragments of a Love Discourse), fragments of the body — hands, thighs, shoulders, and other parts — become metaphorical “rooms” inhabited by emotion, eros, and desire. Body and mind converge in a gesture that challenges the mechanistic understanding of the body articulated by Descartes and Hobbes. The body is no longer conceived as an instrument or machine, but as a place of experience, intimacy, and affect.
Rome brings with it a particular consciousness of the relationship between nature, memory, and dwelling. Here, the layers of history remain materially embedded in the urban fabric, while the growing awareness of ecological collapse gives rise to a distinctly contemporary form of eco-anxiety. The city becomes a space in which the memory of an intimate relationship with nature encounters the uncertainty of the present.
The works of Primarosa Cesarini Sforza, including two oil paintings and two artist ’s books, evoke the frescoes of the Domus of Livia and the House of the Golden Bracelet in Pompeii. Nature emerges as a maternal, protective, and familiar space, intrinsic to the very notion of home and traditionally placed under the protection of the ancient Lares. In Cesarini Sforza ’s work, this memory resurfaces as an image of a familiar and joyful past, in stark contrast to the oppressive and unsettling experience of the present.
The idea of nature as home is equally central to Ines Fontenla ’s practice. Occupying the main wall of the gallery, a monumental pencil drawing depicts a large tree beneath whose branches a number of chairs are gathered. Trees were among humanity ’s earliest shelters. Inscribed within us is a profound sense of belonging to the natural world — a world that is at once father and mother, the origin from which we descend. Like Odysseus, we experience its absence and long for a return to the place that first offered us protection and belonging.
Luana Perilli further develops the notion of the natural home. In the Regeneration series, already presented in the Bilotti exhibition, prints drawn from entomological books evoke the complex social world of ants: their capacity to construct collective dwellings, nourish and protect one another, and operate as a single organism. At Emmeotto Arte, this reflection continues through a series of delicate ceramic “nests” suspended within the gallery space. The exhibition environment is thereby transformed and naturalized, animated by an energy that seems to resurface after centuries of attempts to rationalize, geometrize, control, and mechanize nature.
The exhibition concludes — or rather, opens onto another set of questions — with Thorsten Kirchhoff, a Danish artist who has made Rome his home and the only male artist represented across the two exhibitions. His work Cistite Intercontinentale (Intercontinental Cystitis) approaches, with irony and critical distance, the ways in which female domestic identity has historically been transformed into an idealized and desirable image.
Woman is presented through the codes of physical beauty and the socially prescribed role of “homemaker,” while the work explicitly references Richard Hamilton ’s seminal Pop Art image Just what is it that makes today ’s homes so different, so appealing? (1956). Real, functioning electric lights embedded within the painting introduce a subtle but powerful sense of estrangement. They disrupt the apparent coherence of the domestic scene and compel us to question the nature of the reality we inhabit: is it authentic, or is it a carefully constructed and elaborate dream?
Perhaps this is the question that States of Uncertain Domesticities ultimately chooses to leave unresolved.
What do we mean when we speak of home?
Is it a place, a body, a memory, a relationship, a network of care?
From the domus to the contemporary home, what is at stake is not merely the transformation of the spaces we inhabit, but the shifting ways in which we imagine ourselves, one another, and the world that surrounds and sustains us.