Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO. Campo aperto

Tatiana Bilbao is the featured artist in NATURE 09, the ninth edition of the program conceived By Pippo Ciorra, through which the MAXXI museum invites an architect to create a site-specific installation that engage with the architecture of the museum designed by Zaha Hadid, representing a sort of “three-dimensional self-portrait”.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1972, Tatiana Bilbao is one of the most influential and original voices in contemporary architecture. In 2004, she founded Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO: her design practice integrates research, community involvement and responsible building, ranging from civil architecture to social housing, from landscape interventions to cultural projects. Her participation in NATURE stems from the expressive quality of her architecture, understood as a space open to interaction and social life, combined with a focus on nature, materials and ecological practices.

At MAXXI, her installation “Campo aperto” transforms the Claudia Gian Ferrari Hall into a landscape that visitors can explore and inhabit. The starting point is the game of pelota, which for Mesoamerican civilisations was not merely a recreational activity but also a collective ritual linked to religion, social organisation, life and fertility. On the court, the individual and the community, the human world and the supernatural world, and life and death all came into relation with one another. Tatiana Bilbao’s architecture draws inspiration from this tradition: it does not merely host an activity, but generates opportunities for connection.

Photo © Vincenzo Labellarte Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI