ROME – A new exhibition "The Garden of Virgins” by Rosa Mundi, an internationally acclaimed artist, has opened Sicily from Feb. 3 to March 10. Spread throughout Palazzo Branciforte in Palermo are 118 works and 4 video instillations spanning across 33 years of experimentation in painting, sculpture, photography, and video art.

 Mundi uses natural pigments mixed with olive oil, egg, and jellyfish extract, as well as using recycled materials such as glass, marble and plastic to give new life to matter and play with light and its reflections. The study of light is a theme which characterises Mundi’s works.  

 The exhibition, curated by Andrea Guastella, promoted by the Fondazione Sicilia with the technical support of the Fondazione Donà dalle Rose, Associazione Settimana delle Culture, Doge Venice Red Carpet, is a “powerful and immersive journey” into the “dreamlike world” of Rosa Mundi.  The exhibition leads the audience on a path through an imaginary purifying garden where nature, man, and dreams are centrepiece, separated from everyday reality.

 Entering Palazzo Branciforte, you are welcomed by a mixture of works from the 20^th century and more modern sculptures, selected by Rosa Mundi with the contribution of artists from all over the world. These include Mundi’s most recent works, produced for recent trips to Senegal and Cyprus where she won the Special Award for the Larnaca Art Biennial 2023.

 What makes the works stand out, and the exhibition so distinctive, is that each art piece is accompanied with a musical composition by maestros such as Mario Bajardi, Alberto Bof (who won an Oscar for "Shallow" from “A Star is Born) and Carlo Condarelli, as well as the young and talented Jacopo Lo Bue di Lemos. The experience thus is a combination of light, shadows, music, and semi-transparent images that bring an “earthly paradise” to the heart of Sicily, under the banner of international contemporary art.

 Rosa Mundi, a pseudonym used by this “faceless” artist, describes art as a “sixth sense”, a “third eye” and a “great love” saying that art is “the room in which I wish to expire and smile at life.”

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