Anna Franceschini - Viewing Room

The work DEMONSTRATIONSRAUM is inspired by El Lissitzky's “Cabinet of Abstraction” which was commissioned in 1927 by Alexander Dorner for the Hannover Provincial Museum.
Lissitzky began experimenting with exhibition design in the early 1920s through a practice which aimed at integrating his researches in abstract art with three-dimensional environments.

The Cabinet reflects the belief in the need for new exhibition formats for abstract art which would include the possibility for the spectator to interact with the art works and the exhibition spaces.

The pavilion is a room of about 20 square metres built inside the galleries of the Museum, a modular and adaptable area conceived to host works by constructivist and abstract painters, among whom Piet Mondrian, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger as well as El Lissitzky himself. The Cabinet does not work only as background for the paintings and sculpures on show, but is an art piece by itself.

Echoing the design of the cabinet, DEMONSTRATIONSRAUM is a sculpture intended to be worn and thus interact with the viewer's body. Anna Franceschini reverses the roles between artwork and exhibition space by turning the monstration device into an artwork.

Anna Franceschini (born in 1979 in Pavia) studies objects, artifacts, commodities and modes of exhibition, in order to rediscover their role and configuration within the aesthetics of capital, through a continuous research on sculpture and moving images, as well as performances and installations.

Her videos and films have been presented in several festivals, including: Rotterdam Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Turin Film Festival, Courtisane in Ghent and Vilnius Film Festival. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions organized by: Kunstverein Duesseldorf; Spike Island, Bristol; Museion, Bolzano; Fiorucci Art Trust, London; Almanac, London; KIOSK, Ghent; Vistamare Milan/Pescara; Vera Cortes Galeria, Lisbon; Almanac, London. The artist participated in the Quadrennial of Art in Rome in 2020. Her group exhibitions include: Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg; HFKD, Holstebro, Campoli Presti, Paris; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Istituto Svizzero, Milan-Venice; ICA, Milan; CAC, Vilnius; Kunstraum, London; The Breeder Gallery, Athens; Matadero, Madrid; MAXXI, Rome; Villa Medici, Rome. In 2017, she won the Italian Council Grant, promoted by the Ministry of Culture. In 2019 she directed the short film BUSTROFEDICO, a special project for the Italian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. She is a Pollock-Krasner Foundation fellow for the year 2022. Her work is included in the institutional collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Abbatoirs in Toulouse, the MAXXI and MACRO in Rome, and the GAMeC in Bergamo.

Anna Franceschini holds a doctorate in visual and media studies, writes regularly for art, film and visual culture magazines and has held seminars in institutions, academies and universities. The artist also teaches at the IULM University in Milan.