Fondazione Baruchello presents the exhibition by Donatella Landi entitled Pensieri di terra (Thoughts of Earth), curated by Carla Subrizi, conceived as part of the second chapter, Terra come Storia (Earth as History), of the Foundation’s project launched in November 2025.
The exhibition includes a series of works never before shown in Rome and unfolds as a path through film, photography, sound and sculpture, beginning with a preview – featuring sketches, texts and a maquette – of a large installation entitled Sei in un Paese Meraviglioso: 264 porcelain elements bearing reproductions of archive photographs of the major massacres that have marked Italian history.
Drawn from an archive of pre-existing materials collected by the artist, four works (photographs and texts) from a series of forty-nine, act as detonators within the exhibition, awakening personal memories that are not only intimate but also part of a collective history.
The exhibition continues with a series of recent ceramic sculptures in which the concepts of form and the appearance of an entity lead us to consider matter in its generative state. Satiri (2025) – oscillating between recognisability and the absence of a definite physiognomy – are not yet actual forms, but pre-forms awaiting the gaze of the observer to understand who they are and which world they belong to. The clay is perceived in a state that is not yet defined, in search of form and identity. The earth and its materiality are transformed into sculptures through a physical process in which the hands seek out what is already present in the material. Landi draws it out of the clay and does not decide, at first, what to make.
Wacht am Rhein (2013–2021), in the third room, captures the flow of the river Rhine upon which numerous events, both expected and unexpected, unfold: barges carrying goods, birds flying or descending on the water, and the sound of the river’s flow. The layering of nature and history takes centre stage in an ambiguous narrative where it is unclear where, when or if it will end, leaving the viewer with the perception of a disturbing landscape, without a precise location, saturated with shadows and unsettling presences. Conjectures left to the imagination.
The film presents a dark landscape, on the edge of visibility, allowing the reflections on the water and the presence of whatever crosses it to provide a fleeting sense of orientation. However, almost as a clue, the title refers to a famous 19th-century German patriotic Lied, at the origin of the concept of ‘Heimat’: as homeland, belonging, physical but especially inner geography.
The film was shot near Düsseldorf, on the site where Operation Plunder took place in 1945, during which the armies of the United States, Britain and Canada crossed the River Rhine, leading to the collapse of the Third Reich.
The materiality of the clay sculptures and the river water – an unstable platform yet also a shifting boundary where identities converge – engage in dialogue within the rooms. At the end of the exhibition, a further sculpture, Estasi (L’Ebbro), part of a long-standing yet recent research process, welcomes us, setting the entire exhibition itinerary back into a state of transformation and flux.
Landi moves between different media, transposing the materiality of sculpture into the dynamic form of water, the history of the 20th century into an unreal landscape of physical presences, and myth or archetypal imaginaries yet to be explored, into intoxication or the sacred.
Donatella Landi (Rome, 1958) lives and works in Rome and Berlin. Since the early 1990s, she has been working with sound, video and sound installations, photography and film; she has recently introduced sculpture into her practice. She has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including: Museo Pecci, Prato, Zoo (1994); StatenGalerie, The Hague, Zoo – The world was made in seven days (1995); Rome Quadriennale (1996); Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (1995–1998); Valencia Biennale (2001); MACRO, Rome, Le Tribù dell’Arte (2001); 1st International Festival of Art, Science and Technology, Madrid (2002); Akademie der Künste, Sonambiente06, Berlin (2006); KMK, Dimension’ Sonora, San Sebastian (2007); KunstHaus Kloster Gravenhorst, Hörstel, SoundSeeing II (2010); National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow, (2011); Mestna Galerija, Ljubljana, Compagni di viaggio (2011); Galerie de l’UQÀM, Montréal, Donatella Landi / The Resonance of the Image (2013); Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Arche Noha (2014); Auditorium Arte, Parco della Musica, Rome, My Dear, My Beloved (2015); Museum Goch, Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe/Zoo (2009) and Scusi ma lei è felice? (2022); National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, The Long Hot Summer (2023).
Donatella Landi. Pensieri di terra
Curated by Carla Subrizi
Coordination: Marcella Dalila Muraca
Visual identity: Edoardo Visalli
We would like to thank the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome for its support for the video installation
With the partecipation of:
Farzan Kalantar, installation technician
Matteo Costanzo, sound technician
Daniele Coralli – Studio Interno Grigio