Le Chant des Sirènes
L’eau racontée par les artistes
Villa Medici / Accademia di Francia
Rome, IT

Group exhibition
04 October 2024 – 13 January 2025

From 4 October 2024 to 13 January 2025, the Accademia di Francia – Villa Medici in Rome presents Il Canto delle Sirene. L’acqua raccontata dagli artisti (The Song of the Sirens. Water as Told by Artists), a major group exhibition exploring the cultural, ecological, mythological, and political dimensions of water through the works of around thirty internationally renowned contemporary artists.

Curated by Caroline Courrioux and Sam Stourdzé, the exhibition is structured around the cycle of water, inviting visitors to navigate its infinite forms — from rain, sea, and streams to clouds, mist, dew, and tears — framing water not only as a material presence but also as a symbol of transformation, loss, continuity, and responsibility toward the environment we share, especially in the context of the ongoing global ecological crisis.

The hybrid figure of the siren, rooted in myth and metaphor, guides this exploration: sometimes malefic, sometimes protective, half-woman and half-animal, her ambivalence mirrors that of water itself — a primal force that has shaped human imagination from submerged civilizations to the rituals of everyday life.

Among the works featured is Alex Cecchetti’s Blue Underwater Visions, a series of water-inspired watercolors where paper, immersed in baths of metals, pigments, and natural elements, becomes a fluid surface evoking underwater landscapes and liquid light, echoing the exhibition’s attention to water’s poetic and material force.

The show brings together a diverse roster of artists, including Monira Al Qadiri, Simone Fattal, Estrid Lutz, Yiannis Maniatakos, Gaëlle Choisne, Laure Prouvost, Pamela Rosenkranz, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Pamela Rosenkranz, and many others, several of whom created works specifically for the occasion.