Ipogea

For three weekends in October, Palazzo Bentivoglio is opening some of its least-visited spaces to make 'Ipogea' (2021)—a permanent installation by Chiara Camoni (Piacenza, 1974) housed in the building’s sixteenth-century cellars—accessible to the public once again. The work was commissioned by Palazzo Bentivoglio and originated from the discovery of a collection of stones and architectural fragments in the building’s cellars, dating back to its various construction phases and subsequent transformations. Camoni used these elements to create a sequence of four "rooms," intervening with works crafted from materials gathered in the palace garden: earth, leaves, flowers, branches, and ash. The path leads progressively toward a small chamber where the stones are arranged along the walls to form the great coil of a 'Serpentessa'. In keeping with 'Ipogea', which houses a small library of Camoni’s references—from Piranesi to Riegl—in its second room, the first cellar hall will host publications dedicated to the artist’s research for visitors to browse. This selection will allow the environmental dimension of 'Ipogea' to be complemented by a portion of Camoni’s own writings and the texts that have accompanied and explored her work over the years, leading up to 'Con te con tutto'—the Italian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Canziani—highlighting the role that writing, both her own and that of others, plays in her artistic practice. Also on view along the path is 'Memorie del sottosuolo' (2021) by Francesco Carone, an intervention that replaces a brick in one of the cellar pillars with a copy of Dostoevsky’s novel, establishing a direct connection with the bEB, the art history library housed on the palace’s piano nobile.