Alvisi Kirimoto stages Viola and Sappho among Rome’s ruins

Alvisi Kirimoto has designed two exhibition settings within Rome’s Colosseum Archaeological Park, placing Bill Viola’s video art and the poetry of Sappho in distinct relationships with their historic surroundings. Commissioned by Electa, the projects occupy the Church of Santa Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum and the Farnese Aviaries on the Palatine Hill.

The installations address a shared question: how can exhibition design give an artwork enough room to be experienced within a building that already commands attention? At Santa Maria Antiqua, the architects concentrate the encounter inside a dark enclosure. At the aviaries, they work with the rhythm of the architecture, turning its blocked openings into surfaces for colour and moving images.

A dark room within the church

Inside Santa Maria Antiqua, a freestanding volume houses The Greeting, Viola’s 1995 video installation. Its warm, dark-grey exterior sits against the church’s weathered walls and painted surfaces. An open front preserves a visual connection with the surrounding interior, making the enclosure legible as an addition within the older building.

The walls and ceiling inside are black. As these surfaces recede, the screen and soundtrack become the focus of attention. The intervention establishes a quieter field of vision within the richly decorated church, allowing visitors to move between its material history and the concentrated time of the video.

Viola made The Greeting for the US Pavilion at the 1995 Venice Biennale, drawing on Pontormo’s Visitation. A brief encounter between three women unfolds in slow motion, extending gestures and exchanges of glances into a sustained sequence. The Rome presentation accompanies the Pontormo exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale and runs from 11 October 2026 to 6 February 2027.

Poetry across two pavilions

At the Farnese Aviaries, Saffo. Lo spirito della poesia follows a more expansive route through the life and afterlife of the ancient Greek poet. Curated by Silvia Romani, the exhibition divides its subject between two pavilions. The first considers the historical Sappho through artefacts, paintings and representations of the poet; the second traces her presence in legend, popular culture and contemporary work.

Alvisi Kirimoto uses the filled-in openings as large projection surfaces. Water, sky, the moon and fragments of poetry occupy the arched recesses, giving the existing architecture an active role in the display. Objects stand on simple supports set away from the walls, leaving space around each piece.

Elsewhere, red and pale-green surfaces emphasise the succession of arches and display areas. The second pavilion draws on the colours of a romantic garden, supported by a sound and scent environment. Here, the exhibition shifts towards the ways in which Sappho has entered the imagination of later artists and writers.

L’Uovo, by Alda Merini and Enrico Baj, forms one of the exhibition’s symbolic centres. The selection also includes dioramas by Patrick Jacobs, design objects and photographic works. The show runs from 15 October 2026 to 31 January 2027.

Across the two settings, the scale of the intervention remains closely tied to the act of looking. One room gathers attention around a single moving image; the other distributes it across objects, projections and the repeated openings of the pavilions. Their differences make clear how the same practice can work within historic buildings without imposing a single exhibition format.

Project Credits

Exhibition design: Alvisi Kirimoto / @alvisikirimoto

Architects: Massimo Alvisi, Junko Kirimoto
Project team: Massimo Alvisi, Junko Kirimoto, Silvia Rinalduzzi, Akari Haba

Location: Colosseum Archaeological Park, Rome, Italy
Year: 2026

The Greeting di Bill Viola nel Foro Romano. Omaggio a Pontormo
Venue: Church of Santa Maria Antiqua, Roman Forum
Dates: 11 October 2026 to 6 February 2027
Video installation presented by: Parco archeologico del Colosseo with Electa

Saffo. Lo spirito della poesia
Venue: Uccelliere Farnesiane, Palatine Hill
Dates: 15 October 2026 to 31 January 2027
Curator: Silvia Romani
Promoted by: Parco archeologico del Colosseo
Organisation: Electa
Multimedia design: Monkeys Video Lab

Contractor: Tagi 2000
Audio and video: AV Set Produzioni S.p.a

Exhibition photography: ©Serena Eller Vainicher | EllerStudio / @ellerstudio
Architects’ portrait: ©Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi
Site plan: ©Alvisi Kirimoto

Exhibition information: The Greeting at Santa Maria Antiqua / Colosseum Archaeological Park programme