THE CUPRA RING

The project for the exhibition “The Cupra ring. Icons of femininity from prehistory to Rubens, from Van Gogh to the contemporaries” is a site-specific design that builds a dialogue between genres, between the artworks dedicated to women and the hall of distinguished men of the Medici collection.

The exhibition, hosted in the halls of the Palazzo dei Priori in Fermo, is about the iconography of the feminine image through stories, emblems and models in the world of art, from antiquity to the present day. The CUPRA RING is the six-knot ring of the goddess Cupra, an archaeological find associated with the funeral rites of Picene women and chosen as a tribute to the female figure.
The Hall of Distinguished Men has been chosen as the privileged space to host the cultural events inside the Palazzo: a large longitudinal hall that becomes the core of the exhibition.
The design alludes to the archetypal form of the Cupra ring, reproducing a central space defined by 12 large structures. Within this ideal enclosure, the works of art are juxtaposed by figurative, emotional or thematic references with the aim of restoring the multiform image of femininity: its changes, innovations, the permanence of tradition and prejudices.
The 12 self-supporting exhibition structures are configured as large architectural structures inside the volume of the hall: menhirs with a variable triangular base, spaced to allow the perception of the architecture surrounding them.
Each structure houses a lighting system that illuminates both the paintings and the male portraits in the room: in this way the emblematic images of women are ideally spied or admired by the faces of the distinguished men that decorate the room, in a suggestive game of “glances” between artworks, exhibit space and context.