In recent years, many museums are increasingly positioning themselves as active places of restitution and exchange. They are not only focusing on their traditional role of acquiring, preserving and enhancing heritage, but on being real active subjects capable of communicating the collections with guided tours, interactive experiences and temporary exhibitions, in dialogue with the possessions. The Archaeological Museum of Bologna has also decided to invest in a temporary proposal, welcoming the photographic exhibition Portrait of a Woman. Photographs by Maria Paola Landini, conceived by Serendippo APS. The association, a laboratory of artistic and cultural experimentation based at 5C Lab in Vicolo de’ Facchini in Bologna (a former historical laboratory of strong suggestion, belonging to the turner Orlando Martello until his death, when he arranged to give it on loan for use to Serendippo), has been carrying out hybridization projects since 2008 that connect contemporary art and public space in order to rethink the relationships between artistic languages and urban fabric with a particular focus on social transformations, shared memories and new urban geographies. It has conceived exhibitions, festivals and widespread interventions including M.oL.D deLocalizzareMateriali (2011, 2012), Bologna al muro (2011), R.U.S.C.O (2013) and pubbliCITTÀ (2017 to present).
Maria Paola Landini, Bhutan, 2024, courtesy of the artist
The exhibition Portrait of a Woman, curated by its president Etta Polico together with part of the scientific staff of the museum, entirely composed of women starting with the director Paola Giovetti (as documented among other things by some portraits of the same protagonists in the exhibition), was conceived to be hosted at the Archaeological Museum, an optimal setting to carry forward a dialogue between contemporary photography and the traces of the feminine in ancient history. As the essayist and philosopher Siegfried Kracauer observes «we cannot understand photography without understanding time. Every shot is a mortgage on memory, a bridge between past and future». The choice fell on the archive of Maria Paola Landini, with which the association has already measured itself in the past, as it is a collection that spans fifty years of contemporary art (from the 70s to the present day), which brings together more than 100,000 photographs taken around the world during business and leisure trips, with a decidedly non-aesthetic approach, immediate, without filters or stereotypes.
Maria Paola Landini, Rajasthan, 2006, courtesy of the artist
Maria Paola Landini is a scientist, artist, graduated in Biology and Medicine and Surgery and specialized in Microbiology and Virology and became, among the many prestigious positions held, the first female Dean of an Italian medical department. Her scientific background, combined with practice in the field of microbiology, led her to develop a careful eye for detail, rigorous and analytical but also intuitive and highly curious, a detail that is also reflected in her photographic approach. In the exhibition itinerary, the feminine is shown in an authentic, genuine way, without superstructures or poses in a heterogeneous mapping aimed at restoring the image of women over the centuries as the result of historical, cultural and social stratifications. And this is in line with the fil-rouge that underlies the project and that seeks to give answers to the question: in what way has the female figure been represented and continues to be represented in time and space?
Maria Paola Landini, Egitto, 1978, courtesy of the artist
The photographs extracted from the archive are 137 and branch out into the rooms of the permanent collection, crossing it and articulated in six thematic nuclei: from the Lapidary, located in the splendid courtyard on the ground floor of the museum (Woman as she is. The present as testimony), to the prehistoric and Etruscan section (Female archetypes. The origin as presence), to continue in the Greek section (Looks, communities, rites, resistances) going down to the rooms of the Egyptian collection (Identities, bodies, roles) and ending in the small thematic exhibition located in the atrium, entitled The medal collection reveals itself. The ingenuity of women. In these display cases, 25 Renaissance and modern medals dedicated to illustrious women from the past such as Lucia Bertani, Lavinia Fontana and Laura Bassi are placed next to figures of scientists, humanists and artists: the numismatic and photographic language becomes a tool of recognition while at the same time opening up the possibility of testing one of the lesser-known collections of the museum. The itinerary was conceived starting from the selection of materials up to the way the exhibition was constructed, setting itself up with the pre-existing collection of archaeological finds, as demonstrated by the impressive photographs of women captured in their daily lives printed on fabric, installed in the Lapidary with reference to the shrouds, which impose themselves as true “living epigraphs”.
Maria Paola Landini, Sri Lanka, 1989, courtesy of the artist
The giant photographs of ordinary women (an Italian singer in Dubai, a worker in a rice field in Bhutan or a young mother in Sri Lanka with her child in her arms, to name just a few), placed next to the tombstones of ancient Bononia (where even high-ranking women were denied the praenomen) or the limestone slabs of freedwomen, immortalised in an extra-ordinary normality, stand out in their large format, like flags of pride and dignity, thanks to a non-judgmental photography that presents itself as an act of recognition and testimony. In the Prehistory section, a single large photograph was chosen, taken during a travel to Kathmandu, which reminds the author of ancient Paleolithic Venuses, symbols of fertility and generative power: encountered by Landini while she was busy with her daily work gestures next to the exaggeratedly sumptuous temples, it condenses a centering that surpasses the excessive luxury that surrounds it. This figure synthesizes the strength of the feminine that is expressed in going beyond the biological capacity for reproduction, but to give life in a broader sense, naturally predisposed to support, nourish, welcome, proceed.
Detail of an Attic black-figure phormiskos with mourners, from Athens, ceramic, 550-530 BC, ph. MCABo, courtesy of the Archaeological Museum of Bologna; Maria Paola Landini, Giava, 1982, courtesy of the artist
The most conspicuous corpus of photographs is concentrated in the Etruscan section, which is in turn divided into six subsections: an area of the museum rich in varied finds that testify to the interest of the artists of the time in creating works with usually bright colors, expressive rather than attentive to perfection and details, in resonance with Maria Paola Landini’s photos. The photographic selection plays with the connections that the finds recall, highlighting continuity and discontinuity with respect to the iconographies of the past. The choice fell on shots that focus on female figures immersed in their authentic daily life, which frame bodies that are true “living archives”, together with clothing that has always been a strongly connoting, aesthetic and cultural language, placed in a social space that stands out as a central element, be it a market, a street, a square. The photographs highlight gestures, postures and glances (captured in a participatory horizontality, in a hierarchical abolition of the photographer and the portrayed), giving us images of women immersed in their varied roles, autonomous, real active subjects (“resistance is ancient and continues to be written on bodies, in glances, in silences”), similarly to the ancient Etruscans who were free and independent in society despite their contemporary Greek and Roman counterparts.
Detail of an Attic red-figure cup (kylix) with female musicians, from Vulci, ceramic, mid-5th century BC. ph. MCABo, courtesy of the Archaeological Museum of Bologna; Maria Paola Landini, New York City, 2011, courtesy of the artist
In fact, they participated in banquets alongside their spouses, as evidenced by the reproduction of the wall fresco of the Tomb of the Painted Vases of Tarquinia present in the museum itinerary where a man and a woman are feasting on the klime. They were also particularly well-groomed and elegant, as we are told, among other things, by some jewels found in the Tomb of the Ori such as the tintinnabulo, a ritual pendant typical of the Bolognese visible in the exhibition, strongly connoting. In the Greek section, some of Landini’s photographs are juxtaposed with ancient objects in which connections are revealed: the episode of the celebration of a funeral rite in Java in the heart of the forest finds a thematic echo in a detail of an Attic phormiskos with piangenti (the scene taken in the East is characterized by a certain serenity determined by the Buddhist belief despite the Greek representation which is pervaded by a certain drama), a harp player in New York’s Central Park is linked to the decoration of a kylix (an Attic cup depicting a woman sitting next to a maidservant with a lyre and double tibia), the stolen shot of a young Greek woman on a bus reminds the photographer of the face of Athena Lemnia (whose portrait is exhibited next to the Roman marble copy of the goddess, made by Phidias).
Athena Lemnia, marble copy of the Greek bronze original by Phidias, late 1st century BC-early 1st century AD, ph. MCABo, courtesy of the Archaeological Museum of Bologna; Maria Paola Landini, Greece, 2019, courtesy of the artist
Within the entire exhibition itinerary, in order to establish an active exchange between photography and archaeology, a targeted selection was made among 21 finds of various types (statues, reliefs, votive objects, inscriptions), linked to the hosted shots. Furthermore, through a QR code placed next to these objects, the visitor can access a travel story extrapolated from the author’s diaries. The project that combines photography, archaeology, anthropological reflection (accompanied by a bilingual catalog published by Serendippoprint, created with the support of the Emilia Romagna region), does not end with the temporary exhibition but includes a rich public program that accompanies and completes it and that includes guided tours, performances, concerts, conferences and in-depth meetings with scholars and researchers (https://www.museibologna.it/archeologico/rassegne/ritratto-di-donna-110/).
Info:
Ritratto di donna. Fotografie di Maria Paola Landini
13/05/25-13/10/25
Museo Civico Archeologico
Via dell’Archiginnasio, 2
The exhibition is accessed with the Museum ticket
The exhibition observes the same opening hours as the Museum
www.museibologna.it/archeologico
After classical studies, she enrolled at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Bologna, graduating in History of Cinema (DAMS) and later in Art History. She obtained a Master in Communication for cultural enterprises. Journalist and critic, she collaborates with various print and online magazines specialized in the artistic and cultural sector, including Finestre sull’Arte, Segno, Exibart, Zeta-International magazine of poems and research, Punto e Linea Magazine, Gagarin Orbite Culturali. She loves art in all its forms, preferring modern, contemporary and research.
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