Chiara Camoni inaugurates "Figures in the Landscape," the new project of Accademia Carrara

A new multi-year project by Accademia Carrara in Bergamo introduces permanent contemporary sculptures to the PwC Gardens, initiating a dialogue between current practices, the museum collection, and the historical tradition of outdoor sculpture. The FIGURE IN THE LANDSCAPE project, curated by Maria Luisa Pacelli and Elena Volpato, launches in 2026 and consists of interventions that relate current artistic practices and sculptural tradition, with a specific focus on the relationship between figure and landscape.

The first chapter opens in June with the installation of La Forza by Chiara Camoni (Piacenza, 1974), an artist selected for the upcoming Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The work, commissioned by Accademia Carrara in early 2025, is composed of two sculptural elements, a female figure and a lioness, and is inspired by card XI of the Tarot. The iconographic choice is part of a thought-provoking context in which the museum is dedicating an exhibition on the Tarot theme from Feb. 27 to June 2, 2026.

“I have a young friend who does Tarot,” says Chiara Camoni. “Her name is Anita. She shows me the Force card: it represents a woman closing (or maybe opening?) the mouth of a lion (or lioness?). I try to model the two figures, starting from that gesture, so strong. It happens that slowly they detach, they separate: I discover that hand and mouth are of the same material, which blooms and sizzles at the same time.”

In Camoni’s work, human figure and animal share the same material and preserve the traces of an original union, configuring themselves as a symbiotic couple. The work was conceived expressly for the context of the gardens and will become a permanent part of Accademia Carrara’s collection.

FIGURES IN THE LANDSCAPE envisages an alternation of artists of different generations, called to confront the Italian tradition of gardens inhabited by sculptural presences, a line that since the Renaissance has seen a constant dialogue between nature and statuary. The curatorial choices are oriented toward authors who, in recent decades, have renewed sculptural language from a conscious memory of art history, establishing a direct relationship with the works preserved in the museum.

In the fall, the project will be enriched by the relocation, in their original position at the entrance to the garden, of the 17th-century sandstone sculptures depicting Mars and Minerva. About five feet tall, the two works, which belonged to Giacomo Carrara, came from the garden of his house in Bergamo and were placed in the Carrara Academy in 1796. After a conservative restoration agreed upon with the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province

Chiara Camoni inaugurates "Figures in the Landscape," the new project of Accademia Carrara

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