On Saturday, 7 March 2026, at 17:00 ΕΜΣΤ will host a presentation of Italian artist Rossella Biscotti’s multidimensional work. The event is part of the Public Programme for the Museum’s flagship exhibition Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives, which features Biscotti’s monumental installation Clara alongside an extensive selection of more than 200 works. Taking its cue from the recent release of two new books by the artist, the event will include a screening of Biscotti’s film The Trial and a panel discussion featuring the artist, publisher and political scientist George Kalambokas and ΕΜΣΤ curator Daphne Vitali, moderated by the museum’s publications advisor Theophilos Tramboulis.
Both the film and the eponymous book are the result of Biscotti’s decade-long research into the prosecution of the Italian leftist group Autonomia Operaia [Workers’ Autonomy], a leading member of which was Italian thinker Toni Negri. The trial – known as the 7th April Case – brought to light the political backdrop of the 1970s leftist movements and the repressive mechanisms employed by European states at the time. As a whole, Biscotti’s The Trial proposes a shifting framework for approaching political history and the performative nature of justice; it encompasses installations, sculptures, performances, reading groups, film and printed works.
Biscotti’s second monograph, titled Title One, I Dreamt, Clara and Other Stories, was published by Castello di Rivoli, Turin, on the occasion of the artist’s first major retrospective held there in 2024. Edited by Marianna Vecellio, published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln. The publication supported by the Italian Council 13th edition promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The exhibition catalogue – which features an extensive essay on the work currently on view at ΕΜΣΤ – is the first comprehensive monograph of Biscotti’s work, spanning more than two decades of her artistic practice.
The event will last approximately one hour and will be held in English on the Museum’s Mezzanine.
Admission is free
Rossella Biscotti is currently showing her work Stranded (2021) at TAVROS Art Space as part of the exhibition For Our Time Is the Time of Water (March 5–June 27), which explores contested water resources and the legacies of extraction and pollution.
BIOGRAPHY
Rossella Biscotti was born in Molfetta, Italy; she lives and works between Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Brussels, Belgium.
Rossella Biscotti’s cross-media practice – spanning filmmaking, performance, and sculpture – reconstructs social and political events through personal narratives that explore the subjective experiences of individuals against the backdrop of violent institutionalised systems. By integrating personal experience and oral histories, she undertakes the construction of an unofficial account of history that lives on the margins of official discourse and challenges dominant discourses. Her work has been presented at prominent international institutions such as MAXXI, dOCUMENTA(13), e-flux, WIELS and the Castello di Rivoli.
