Four American Academy Fellows, responding to the restrictions and limits of the Covid era, have produced sculptures that are installed up and down the Janiculum hill, accessible to AAR residents and passers-by. Animating the pine groves of the Doria-Pamphilij park and the portico of Bramante’s Tempietto, as well as the courtyards of the American Academy’s main building, these
site-specific works invite viewers to re-engage with familiar spaces and explore new vistas. This balance of stasis and movement is perfectly suited to a spring of tentatively hopeful reopenings in Rome.
Katy Barkan, 2021 Rome Prize in Architecture; Francesca Berni, 2021 ENEL Italian Fellow in Architecture, Urban Design, and Landscape Architecture; Sara Enrico, 2021 Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT Italian Fellow in Visual Arts; and Corinna Gosmaro, 2021 Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT Italian Fellow in Visual Arts.
Streetscapes has realized thanks to Adele Chatfield-Taylor and John Guare Fund for the Arts.
“Rome is a big fold.” We can begin to locate Sara Enrico’s undertakings at the American Academy in this recent statement. RGB (skin) 2021 continues Enrico’s manipulation of textiles, printed and wrapped around a foam core, as well as her exploration of transformative, overlapping artistic processes: a digital scan materialized on fabric; a membrane that becomes a body; data that is next to a picture and then a sculpture. The basis of her approach is firm, even as new contexts inspire. Rome, endlessly folded back upon itself, is a particularly resonant space for her evolving body of work. We spy Enrico’s latest sculptural ensemble through the imposing fence that separates the American Academy from the street. Its elements recline and rise up from the lawn, in a chorus of activity. Perhaps they play together, or perhaps they rest. They are architectural, theatrical, and mysterious. We cannot assess their weight from a distance, nor how they might fit together. In fact, they are carefully carved out of a single block of foam, so that one element might nest within another. This play between geometry and whimsy is typical of Enrico’s work, as she moves between the functional and the fantastical.
Text by Elizabeth Rodini
