The exhibition organized by the Italian Embassy in Zambia within the context of a cultural cooperation project titled “Building an Art Bridge between Italy and Zambia” will open on 19 April.
The exhibition will be set up at the National Museum of Lusaka and will display the work of six Italian artists, some of which are contained in the Farnesina Collection (Pietro Ruffo, Domenico Bianchi, Gioacchino Pontrelli, Luca Catalano Gonzaga, Irene Kung, and Matteo Montani) and of 12 Zambian artists. Co-curator of the exhibition together with Italian art critic and historian Costantino D’Orazio, is William Bwalia Miko, Zambian artist and university professor and Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy since 2019.
Moreover, the exhibition will be illustrated in a printed catalogue that will be handed out to Zambian top officials at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Pietro Ruffo and Gioacchino Pontrelli, two of the the artists involved in the project, will be in Lusaka concomitantly with the opening of the exhibition (from 19 April to 19 June) and will attend numerous of the events on the agenda, including lab activities with the students of the Italian school in Lusaka, lectures at the Italian-Zambian Cultural Center hosted at the museum, cooperative projects with local communities active in the sector of the conservation of natural resources and the protection of parks and fauna. At the close of the exhibition, the two Italian artists will donate the works made during their experience in Lusaka to the Embassy.
