Triviale, 2024

MACRO, Rome (IT), February – May 2024

With Triviale MACRO presents the work of French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin (1980) with and within the Feel Good Cooperative collective, founded in Rome in 2020 by the artist herself with architect and researcher Serena Olcuire and a group of Colombian trans sex workers. The core of the Cooperative is composed of photographer and sex worker Alexandra Lopez, Giuliana Mira, Gilda Star, Barby de Martinez, Diana Veruzca Martinez, Serena Olcuire and Pauline Curnier Jardin. This is the first time the Cooperative presents its work, in exhibition form, in the same city in which it has been conceiving and creating a collective practice.

Triviale, Italian for trivial is understood as something vulgar and pedestrian, banal. Trivia, on the other hand is the Roman divinity of spells and specters; she is the protector of three-way junctions (trivi), watching over all those who travel on foot. Her triple gaze is reflected throughout the exhibition both spatially and conceptually, overlooking the overlapping monumental power structures that characterize the city of Rome—the Roman Empire, the Church, the legacy of Fascism—and revealing them from the perspective of a group of sex workers.

The viewer is ushered into the space via a balcony that overlooks the external section of the room, concealing a theatrical set in which the public and the domestic nature of sex work are enacted and themes of gender identity, migration, the legacy of colonialism are humorously elaborated on. Three films made by the Cooperative in Rome divide the exhibition into chapters and the space into islands. Fireflies / Lucciole (2021), filmed on Ancient Rome’s Appian Way, along the margins of the city, is a self-narration beyond the categories and definitions sex workers are normally subjected to. The film is positioned in dialogue with the sculpture of a re-invented streetlight made by Alexandra Lopez, presenting a further material revision of the classic metaphors attributed to sex workers. The Death of the Pope (2023), a multi-media installation occupies the back wall of the space and documents the Cooperative’s visit to the Vatican following the death of Pope Benedict XVI in the form of a video and a group of etchings. At the centre of the space a circular bed faces a paravent—reminiscent of doll-house packaging—donned with the garments worn by members of the Cooperative in their recent performance, Le Colonne della Colombo (2023), in EUR, Rome’s Fascist era neighborhood. Traversed by Via Cristoforo Colombo, a road leading to the center of the city built by Mussolini to re-position Italy as a colonial power, the neighborhood is also a well-known meeting point between sex workers and their clients. The paravent screen also hosts a projection featuring the teaser of the performance itself, which took place on October 12, celebrated in the United States as Columbus Day.

The three films—set respectively along Via Appia Antica, the nave of St. Peter’s and Via Cristoforo
Colombo—create a trivium in the exhibition. In a joyful journey through this junction, the protagonists of the films disturb the norms and the urban decorum of the city by turning their mischievous and desecrating glances upon these three emblematic sites.

In addition to these three filmic installations and the balcony, which are the fruit of collective thinking and work, the exhibition space is scattered with sculptural elements conceived by individual members of the Cooperative. These include a ready-made iron sidewalk pole salvaged by Gilda Star, two oval shaped mirror-masks by Giuliana Mira, and Pauline Curnier Jardin’s work, la bouche. Altogether, the works in the exhibition present the layered experience of the Cooperative with unashamed playfulness. They explore the art of joy and of feeling good through performance, role play, entertainment and beauty, revealing the fundamental presence of these elements in both sex and artistic practice.

The exhibition has been conceived within the backdrop of an ongoing workshop, dubbed the Feel Good Accademia di Belle Arti, which began at the start of 2023. It has consisted of a series of meetings, film screenings, lectures and practical sessions with artisans, as well as conversations around the meanings behind making art work. Self-representation and self-determination, but also the seldom discussed theme of economic renumeration. Triviale as a result seeks not only to expand the languages of art and authorship, but also to reveal voices and visions narrating the city of Rome with and from its margins. Concealed by the overt power of the monuments they attempt to deconstruct, the members of the Cooperative present their own liminal history of Rome.

The exhibition is promoted by Assessorato alla Cultura di Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo
With the support of Trampoline, Association in support of the French art scene, Paris
Nuovi Mecenati

Feel Good Cooperative thanks: Colin Ledoux, Elisa Giuliano, Rachel Garcia, Ellen De Bruijne PROJECTS, ChertLüdde, Locales, Jindřich Chalupecký Society, Unruly Kinship project: Aneta Rostkowska and Kris Dittel. 

Views of the exhibition Triviale, MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Rome, IT
Curated by Chiara Siravo and Luca Lo Pinto
Photos: Agnese Bedini – DSL Studio