From June 25 to August 2, 2026, Teatro 2 at the Mattatoio in Rome will host *The Abstract Films* for the first time in the city : Sculpting Narratives in Space (2023–2025), a series of interactive and immersive works by Chiara Passa consisting of four films titled Yellow Film, Black & White Film, Red Film, and Blue Film. The exhibition, curated by Paola Lagonigro and Laura Leuzzi, is sponsored by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, and Fondazione Mattatoio – Città delle Arti, and is organized by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in collaboration with Latitudo.
The project is part of the artist’s exploration of the boundary between the real and the virtual, developed through interactive digital environments in which the viewer is invited to participate in the construction of the narrative. The four-part series features a minimalist aesthetic, based on solid geometries and an electronic soundscape, within nonlinear narrative structures subject to continuous variation. Each film introduces a different mode of interaction, ranging from the manipulation of physical objects to the use of choices generated by artificial intelligence. In this context, the narrative fragments and reassembles itself each time in a different form, creating an experience that intertwines the languages of cinema, sculpture, and interactive play.
The works are conceived as digital, multisensory narrative environments, designed to engage with the physicality of the Mattatoio in Rome, a former industrial complex characterized by surfaces marked by time and a layered architectural structure. The material components of the space—including metal structures and irregular volumes—become an active part of the exhibition setup, creating a tension between material memory and the algorithmic construction of the image.
The four floor-mounted LED walls, equipped with a directional audio system, integrate into the space as visual and auditory elements that reinterpret the site’s original geometries. The digital images overlay the architectural structure, either following or contradicting its lines, until the environment is transformed into a hybrid organism. In this relationship, the space functions as an active matrix that absorbs its own industrial history and restores it in the form of new perceptual configurations.
Interaction with the public occurs through devices and inputs generated in part by artificial intelligence systems, which take the form of buttons and interactive objects. Visitors are invited to trigger a nonlinear narrative in which the site’s memory and digital projections coexist within the same visual and auditory field. The Mattatoio space is thus described as a computational membrane traversed by algorithmic images and constantly transforming sound streams.
Each of the four works introduces a different mode of participation. *Yellow Film* is based on a narrative remix constructed through thirty interactive envelopes accompanied by a suspenseful electronic soundtrack. *Black & White Film* uses thirty sculptural objects that shape the narrative structure within sound sequences inspired by techno minimalism. Blue Film features a system of AI prompts and remixed sound effects that generate a dynamic experience. Red Film integrates AI prompts with sound and color interactions that continuously alter the narrative’s development.
Taken together, the four films constitute a participatory ecosystem in which architecture and the digital imagination overlap and mutually redefine one another. The audience is drawn into a perceptual cartography where urban memory, industrial archaeology, and algorithmic processes coexist within the same exhibition space. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog to be presented in September, edited by Paola Lagonigro and Laura Leuzzi, with texts by the curators, the artist, and Croatian curator and digital art pioneer Darko Friz. As part of the exhibition, two guided tours are scheduled: on July 14 at 6:00 p.m. with Paola Lagonigro and on July 22 at 6:00 p.m. with Laura Leuzzi, both dedicated to exploring the exhibition itinerary and the artist’s research in greater depth.
Chiara Passa is an Italian artist who explores immersive digital architectures and the transformations of space through tools such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and interactive audiovisual devices. Active in media art since the late 1990s, her practice focuses on the relationship between the physical and virtual dimensions, creating perceptual ecosystems in which algorithm-generated images, digital constructions, and continuous interactions alter the viewer’s perception and redefine the experience of space.
Her work has been presented internationally in galleries, festivals, conferences, museums, and institutions. Among her major exhibitions are: RomaEuropa Festival, Ex Mattatoio, Rome (2025); META-PAN, Palazzo Arte, Naples (2024); the solo exhibition *Object (RE) Oriented Reality* at Panke Gallery, Berlin (2023); the solo exhibition *Still Life* at the Zabludowicz Collection Museum, London (2021–2022); MADATAC XI – Virtual Biennial of New Digital Media Art, Madrid (2020); the solo exhibition *Object Oriented Space* at the MLAC Museum, Rome (2019); *Virtual Natives Sculpture* at Roehrs and Boetsch, Zurich (2019); “Oslo Night Show” at the HEK Museum, Basel (2018); “InSonic Immersive Show” at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2017); “The Ways of Something” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016–2017); the solo exhibition *From Live Architecture: Dimensioning* at Furtherfield, London (2016); Off Biennale Cairo (2015–2016); *ISEA Disruption* at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2015); *Morphos* at the Vortex Dome – immersive media, Los Angeles (2014); Media Art Histories IV – RENEW, Riga (2013); FILE | Electronic Language International Festival, São Paulo (2011); Electrofringe – Festival of New Media Art, Newcastle, Australia (2008); BizArt Center, Shanghai (2005); MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2004); 11th Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean “Cosmos – A Sea of Art,” Athens (2003); XIV Quadriennale, Royal Palace, Naples (2003); 48th Venice Biennale (with the Oreste group), Venice (1999); and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice (1999).
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Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.; closed Mondays. Admission is permitted up to one hour before closing time
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| At the Mattatoio in Rome, Chiara Passa’s interactive films blur the line between the real and the digital |
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