The “India hanging”, which adorns the great fair of the Academy of France in Rome, has become a subject of growing tension between residents and administration.
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Each summer, in August, the sixteen residents of the Academy of France in Rome left the Villa Medici, French cultural and heritage flagship, and go over to the following promotion. But in recent years, this informal transition within the venerable institution, founded under Louis XIV in 1666 and installed in 1803 in the Italian capital by Napoleon Bonaparte, is crossed by recurring discomfort. That triggered by the presence of the Indies hanging, installed in the large living room where the majority of the cultural events of the prestigious residence are held.
The dispute thus appears in the traditional collective exhibition of residents of the year, visible until August 7, and in the catalog that accompanies it. Ivan Argote’s pleading text, in the running for the Marcel Duchamp Prize, questions a “Can we still ask questions? Can we make things happen?”, These words being engraved on the steps of the stairs From the exhibition, where it offers an alternative journey with a pink cement flow planted with branchages of the Bosco.
The object of the rail conflict, a series of eight tapestries woven at the Manufacture des Gobelins between 1724 and 1726, represents hunting and wandering scenes at Through exuberant nature, featuring men and women with black skin and animal fighting. They were composed from paintings made in Brazil and offered to France as a diplomatic gift by the Governor General of the Dutch colonies. “Representative of taste for exoticism under the old regime, [they] had been sent (…) by the crown of France to (…) Headquarters of the Academy to embellish the place”, we can read on the site of the residence.
“ambivalent object”
The subject is far from being neutral as to French colonial history as well as that of the places: it was Minister Colbert who had organized the royal manufacturers. The same Colbert who founded the Academy of France in Rome and who prepared the Black Code, relating to the administration of slavery in the colonies. And each year, with more echo, residents raise the question: “Should this ambivalent object be placed in majesty at the heart of the villa?”
In 2019-2020, the questioning of the sumptuous decor was brought by two residents, the artists Pauline Curnier-Jardin and Sammy Baloji. The following year, the painter Apolonia Sokol had taken over the torch, questioning the presence of Colbert’s statue in the gardens. Black Lives Matter and the question of the statues of statues had been there.
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