Silvia Bre and Carmen Gallo Read Poetry at the American Academy in Rome Opening

On 20 October, the courtyard of the American Academy in Rome hosted a poetry reading by Silvia Bre and Carmen Gallo, staged alongside the opening of "Giorgio Griffa / Kamrooz Aram: Paintings," curated by Ilaria Puri Purini. The exhibition pairs the Turin painter with the American artist of Iranian origin. Aliza Wong introduced the evening, thanking the Lorcan O'Neill gallery and the Fondazione Giorgio Griffa for helping make the initiative possible and stressing the link between painting and literature. Bre's reading leaned toward the evocative, building images and atmospheres through rhythm; Gallo offered a more concrete register, attentive to precise imagery, and presented an unpublished poem during the evening. The two poets sat side by side at a shared small table with the audience gathered around, a format the Academy has long cultivated: placing two voices in relation while each keeps its own identity. The pairing mirrored the Griffa-Aram dialogue without asking poetry to explain or translate painting. The Academy has long served as a site of exchange between Italian and American artists and between disciplines. The show frames both painters as challenging the hierarchies of Western art history.