LUCA VITONE
Romanistan, 2019, 73’
Screening and conversation with Lorenzo Romito, Gennaro Spinelli and Luca Vitone
#Agora
Romanistan documents the journey, departing from Bologna on 25 May 2019, taken by Luca Vitone to reach Chandigarh, with the aim of backtracking through the itinerary of the Rom people at the end of the first millennium, migrating from northwest India towards Europe. He travelled with a team composed of an expert on Romaní culture in Italy, a director of photography, a cameraman, a sound engineer, a logistics and production assistant, and two professional drivers. The film, a true road movie, symbolically opens to show the frescos by the first Rom painter in the history of art, Antonio Solario, known as Lo Zingaro (The Gypsy). In the 42 days of travel in two vans, the troupe crossed Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Iran and Pakistan, finally reaching India. During the trip interviews were filmed with Rom personalities living in those countries, such as the Croatian Member of Parliament Veljko Kajtazi, the activist Lilyana Kovatcheva, the journalist Orhan Galjus, and the musician/teacher Santino Spinelli. These encounters alternate with moments of life of the communities encountered, and views of the many landscapes crossed, shot from a camera car. The title Romanistan comes from the words of Manush Romanov, who imagined the possibility of creating a utopian Rom country.
For the screening of Romanistan, the author and artist Luca Vitone will converse with Gennaro Spinelli, one of the most famous Rom violinists on an international level, and Lorenzo Romito, architect, researcher and founding member of the workshop of urban art Stalker/Osservatorio Nomade, for an exploration of the themes and questions examined and raised by the documentary.
Romanistan is a project supported by Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, winner of the 4th edition of the Italian Council grants (2018), a competition organized by the Directorate-General on Contemporary Creativity and Urban Regeneration of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism (DGCCRU), to promote Italian contemporary art in the world.
LUCA VITONE (1964, Genoa) has been active as an artist since the mid-1980s. In his practice he explores how places are identified through cultural production: art, cartography, music, food, architecture, political associations and ethnic minorities. Since 2006 he has been a professor at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. He has shown work in public and private spaces, in Italy and abroad, including: Museo Novecento, Florence (solo show) (2022); Villa Arson, Nice; Museu de Arte Contemporanea da Universidade de São Paulo (solo) (2022); Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen (D); Weserburg Museum, Bremen (solo); Museo MAXXI, Rome and Villa Adriana, Tivoli (solo) (2021); CSAC, Parma (solo) (2020); MACRO, Rome (2020); Museo Pecci, Prato (solo); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2019); Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow (2018); P.A.C., Milan (solo) (2017); Triennale Milano (2015); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (solo) (2014); Biennale di Venezia (2003-2013).
LORENZO ROMITO (Rome, 1965) is an artist, architect, curator, and co-founder of Stalker (1995 – present). He is co-curator, with Michael Obrist and Sabine Pollak, of the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, and Professor and Co-Director of the Space and Design Strategies Department at the Kunstuniversität in Linz, Austria (2022 – present). Since 2020, he has taught Public Art with Giulia Fiocca at NABA Rome and the Stalker module for the Environmental Humanities Master’s program at Roma Tre University (2016 – present). He is a Visiting Professor for the Francesco De Sanctis Chair in Italian Language and Culture at ETH Zurich (Spring 2024).
Romito graduated in Architecture from La Sapienza University, Rome (1997), and received the Prix de Rome Architect from the French Academy, Villa Medici, Rome (2000-01). He co-founded Stalker (1995), Osservatorio Nomade (2002), PrimaveraRomana (2009), Stalker Walking School (2012), Biennale Urbana (2014), NoWorking (2016), and SUN, the School of Nomadic Urbanism (2017). He was Artistic Director for the Orestiadi Foundation’s projects “Islam in Sicily, a Garden between Two Civilizations” (2001-06) and “Via Mare, Tales of the Mediterranean” (2003-05). Together with G. Fiocca, he also served as Artistic Director for two three-year projects (2020 – 2022) carried out by Stalker in collaboration with the Department of Culture of Rome Capital: Spontaneously: Celebrating the Wild in the City and Zattera: Adrift in the Dispersed Memories of Rome as Capital (1870 – 2024).With Stalker, Romito has participated in numerous art and architecture exhibitions in Europe and worldwide, including the Venice Biennale (2000, 2008, 2014), Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, in Ljubljana (2000), the Rome Quadriennale (2008), the Riwaq Biennale in Ramallah (2006), and the IABR Rotterdam Biennale (2008). With Stalker, he won the Curry Stone Prize for Social Design in 2016.
GENNARO SPINELLI, who at the age of 32 is now one of the most famous Rom violinists on an international level, with concerts as a soloist in over 30 nations, including some of the most important theatres and festivals in the world, recently performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan and for Pope Francis in the Vatican. He has made appearances on leading national television programs, and is now an ambassador of the International Romanì Union (IRU) for art and culture in the world, and president of the Union of Romanés Communities in Italy (UCRI).
The screening will take place in the museum’s cinema hall
Free admission untill capacity is reached