Paladino and Eno's Sonic Sculpture at Ara Pacis

At the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome, designed by Richard Meier, Mimmo Paladino and Brian Eno created a temporary exhibition titled "Opera per l'Ara Pacis" (March 11–May 11, 2008). Paladino had previously made a permanent mosaic for the museum's 2006 inauguration. The new installation occupies a second hall, featuring an unsettling assemblage of rusted faces, charred torsos, and everyday objects (fish, tiles, guns, hats) arranged on pallets, with birds attached to frozen mouthpieces and bare branches evoking mythology. Eno's ambient soundscape—a mix of instrumental and synthetic sounds, animal echoes, and human voices—plays from multiple CD players on the floor and tiny speakers embedded in the artworks. This follows their earlier collaboration "I Dormienti" at London's Roundhouse in 1999, which featured stylized terracotta gisants and crocodiles. Eno's theory of "ambient music" as discreet and without fixed reference points informs the work. The exhibition's catalog (Gli Ori) includes texts in Italian and English but no CD, unlike the catalog for "I Dormienti" (Alberico Cetti Serbelloni Editore).