Anthea Hamilton: Soft You

Fondazione Memmo is pleased to present Soft You, the first institutional exhibition in Rome by Anthea Hamilton (London, 1978). Curated by Alessio Antoniolli the exhibition is open to the public from Thursday, May 8 to Sunday, November 2 2025.

Hamilton's practice lies at the intersection of installation, sculpture, film, and performance, reimagining visual content from our dominant culture through a subjective lens that reshapes perceptions. With her immersive installations and environments, the artist presents a reality where gender roles, sexuality, domestic life, and diverse cultural traditions are explored as fluid and ever-evolving concepts.

Soft You, taken from the last monologue by Othello, in Shakespeare, reframes three cardinal points in Hamilton’s research: the Shakespearian’s protagonist, the city of Rome and the artist’s own practice. Starting from Othello: A Play, her stage performance created in collaboration with Delphine Gaborit for the artistic center De Singel (Antwerp) in 2024, Hamilton’s exhibition pushes the performative possibilities of her sculptural and installation-based research.

Hamilton’s work draws from autobiographical sources, but it is not grounded in personal history. Instead, the artist weaves together visual and cultural patterns to move beyond individual experience, engaging with collective narratives and shared histories. For her, the influence of Shakespeare and Rome as “cultural pillars” presents them as iconic archetypes, offering a visual language that transcends historical eras. In Soft You, Hamilton revisits her leg shapes, an early leitmotif, placed in dialogue with Rome. Whether materialised as sculpture or incorporated as a decorative element, this motif becomes part of the exhibition space, transforming into a frieze or a three-dimensional object. Echoing the essential nature of ancient Roman numeration, the leg pattern evolves into a language of its own.    

With this exhibition, Hamilton is seeking to “return to zero” a marker of a time before and after, by linking Othello, Rome and her own artistic practice. The new work engages with an array of visual references, employing an associative approach that blends design history, architecture, and fashion. In doing so, a variant is formed.

Soft You, features a collaboration with Alice Rivalta on a mosaic created using the Rankaku technique - an ancient Japanese inlay method that employs quail eggs to decorate small and precious objects such as jewellery. Hamilton applies this technique to a writing desk, bound with a Shibari rope and designed in partnership with Pietroarco Franchetti. Also featured is a series of metal screens that reference architecture, playing with light through their reflecting surface; framed collaged stills from the documentation of Othello: A Play, shot by Tanguy Poujol; a collaboration with scent designer Ezra-Lloyd Jackson, Creative Director of deya; and soft textile sculptures. These works, drawing from disparate eras and geographies, enable the artist to create a hybrid lexicon, where elements blend seamlessly.

Fondazione Memmo
Fondazione Memmo was founded in 1990, with the aim of realizing Roberto Memmo’s desire to establish cultural activities that could bring the wider public closer to the art world, by giving them a direct knowledge of some of the greatest masterpieces created through the ages by the most varied cultures and civilizations.

Since 2012, Fondazione Memmo has broadened its views with a new exhibition programme entirely dedicated to the contemporary art scene. The objectives of Fondazione Memmo include contributing towards developing cultural initiatives in Rome and the surrounding area, establishing dialogues, connections and collaborations with international and local institutions, and encouraging interactions between artists and the city of Rome.

This new phase began with a solo exhibition by Sara VanDerBeek (2012), followed by shows featuring Sterling Ruby (2013), Shannon Ebner (2014), and Camille Henrot (2016), all curated by Cloé Perrone. In 2017, the foundation presented a solo exhibition by Giuseppe Gabellone, curated by Francesco Stocchi, who later also curated exhibitions for German artist Kerstin Brätsch and the duo KAYA, as well as solo exhibitions by Latifa Echakhch (2019), Oscar Murillo (2021), and Amalia Pica (2022). In 2023, the foundation hosted a solo exhibition by Sin Wai Kin, followed in 2024 by the first institutional solo exhibition in Italy of Wynnie Mynerva, both curated by Alessio Antoniolli.

In 2015, Fondazione Memmo presented the group exhibition Conversation Piece, curated by Marcello Smarrelli. Over the years, ten additional editions have followed, organized annually with the aim of mapping the artistic presence in Rome, particularly by engaging artists hosted by the city’s academies and foreign cultural institutions.

Anthea Hamilton ​biography
Anthea Hamilton (b. 1978, London) lives and works in London. She was a finalist for the Turner Prize in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include: Othello: A Play, De Singel, Antwerp (2024); cold, cold heart, kaufmann repetto, Milan (2022); The Pillow Book, O’Flaherty’s, New York (2022); Mash Up, M HKA—Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Antwerp (2022); Anthea Hamilton: The Prude, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2019); Volcano Extravaganza 2019—DEATH, Fiorucci Art Trust, Stromboli (2019); The New Life, Secession, Vienna (2018); The Squash, Tate Britain, London (2018); A is for… and, am, anxious, apple, adore…, kaufmann repetto, Milan (2018). Her work has also been featured in the travelling exhibition British Art Show 8 and in numerous international contexts, including the Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (with Nicholas Byrne), the 13th Lyon Biennale, and the 1st Gwangju Biennale. Recent group exhibitions include: Paraventi: Folding Screens from the 17th to 21st Century, Fondazione Prada, Milan (2023); Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2022); The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2021); May You Live In Interesting Times, 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Get up, stand up now, Somerset House, London (2019).       

Alessio Antoniolli biography
Alessio Antoniolli is the director of Triangle Network, where he develops a programme of artists and curator’s residencies across a world-wide network of visual art organisations. He is also the curator at Fondazione Memmo, Rome, where he commissions a yearly exhibition by international artists, including Sin Wai Kin and more recently, Wynnie Mynerva. In 2025, he will curate “Portal,” a section of miart—modern and contemporary art fair in Milan.

Antoniolli is the former director of Gasworks, a non-profit visual art gallery and studios space in London, where he led a programme of residencies for over 500 artists from 80 countries around the world; and provided the first UK institutional exhibitions for artists including Song Dong, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Violet Kudzanai Hwami, Trevor Yeung and Anna Perach. He lectures widely and has been part of many international juries including the UK’s Turner Prize in 2019.