Three performances by RUFA students at the Andersen Museum for the Night of Museums.
Saturday 17 May 2025 | from 8.00 PM to 10:00 PM | Casa Museo Andersen, Via Pasquale Stanislao Mancini 20, Rome. Free entrance.
On the occasion of the 2025 Night of Museums, on 17 May the Hendrik Christian Andersen Museum will host a public performance event featuring three artistic interventions conceived and realised by RUFA students. The performances will take place in various rooms of the villa throughout the extended opening hours, inviting the audience into an emotional and contemplative immersion through memory, art, and performative gesture.
With its archival heritage and fascinating library, the villa—dedicated to Andersen’s mother, Helene—represents a powerful source of inspiration for works that intertwine art, memory, and history. The selected performances focus on the female figures who shaped the artist’s life: a creative journey that, through archival research, the study of the works, and a deep exploration of the historical and cultural context, gives voice and visibility to often overlooked protagonists.
A House of One’s Own – Curatorial text by Marta Jovanović
Inspired by the radical gesture of Womanhouse by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, A House of One’s Own transforms the Andersen Museum into a living, breathing space, animated by the presence of women and their performative actions. Each room becomes a container of intimate expression, tension, and liberation—a house inhabited by voices that refuse silence.
Through three distinct performances, the artists create a fragile balance that swings between chaos and control, intimacy and distance, memory and presence. The museum’s domestic architecture becomes a stage to reclaim space, authorship, and care.
With works by RUFA students Julia Vasconcelos, Sofia Arredondo and Arifah Ashri, A House of One’s Own is not merely a performance programme—it is a feminist occupation.
Below are the three performances that will animate the spaces of the Andersen Museum (from 8 PM to 10 PM):
“To Become Matter” – Julia Vasconcelos presents a performative act of resistance and liberation. Using plaster, she subverts the idealised and symbolic representations of women in Andersen’s work, exposing the absence, weight, and fragility of the real female body.
“Dear Mother” – Sofia Arredondo offers a slow and intimate act of resistance. She uses cross-stitch embroidery to transform maternal correspondence into a visible and affective sculpture of time, memory, and female presence.
“The Overlooked Muse” – Arifah Ashri pays tribute to effort. A toothbrush becomes a pedestal for maternal grace, and each stroke reveals the quiet power of an invisible love.
The collaboration between RUFA and the Andersen Museum responds to three main objectives: to enhance the historical and cultural heritage of the museum through contemporary artistic languages; to stimulate RUFA students’ creativity and interpretative skills through direct engagement with the museum space; and to promote a dialogue between past and present that makes themes such as universalism, pacifism, and progress both accessible and relevant today. The performances will integrate with the architecture and artworks of the villa, transforming the space into a living laboratory of connection between art and memory.