Eva & Franco Mattes and Andreas Zampella at Quadriennale di Roma

The sixth edition of Portfolio at the Quadriennale di Roma features two distinct projects: Andreas Zampella's painting 'Passaggi al buio' and Eva & Franco Mattes' video installation 'The bots'. Zampella's work, created during a residency in Puglia, depicts a 'stanza dello scirocco'—a semi-dark room beneath noble palaces in Southern Italy historically used for cooling and secret banquets. The painting extends onto the wall and floor, creating an immersive installation that guides the viewer's gaze 'as if through a peephole or a half-open door'. Eva & Franco Mattes, pioneers of Italian Net Art, present 'The bots', curated by Nadim Samman for the Paesaggio cycle. The work draws on the case of Feroza Aziz, an American girl who used a TikTok makeup tutorial in 2019 to evade censorship while discussing Uyghur Muslims detained in China. The installation uses surfaces from two desks of Facebook moderators in Berlin, with flat geometric figures concealing screens. Two looped videos, performed by actors, recount interviews with real content moderators—anonymous workers exposed to high levels of violence and abuse—challenging the notion that social media censorship is purely algorithmic. The act of applying makeup is portrayed as both self-censorship and a means of expression.