TuorloBlue: between Visual Art and Taste
Italian Institute of Culture | Tokyo | Japan

TuorloBlue is an artistic–gastronomic project conceived in Tokyo during the COVID-19 quarantine by Arch. Andrea Pompili and photographer Ryan Bruss. Bridging Italian and Japanese cultures, the project explores gastronomy as an artistic medium, in which each dish becomes a small architectural composition defined by form, color, and texture. Andrea Pompili acted as co-artist, curator, and catalog designer.

Presented during the VI Edition of Italian Cuisine Week, the exhibition was sponsored by the Italian Embassy in Tokyo and the Italian Institute of Culture in Tokyo, and took place in a building designed by Gae Aulenti. The glass façade was transformed into a luminous surface displaying five recipes as visual compositions.

TuorloBlue proposes a dialogue among art, architecture, and taste, in which ingredients are reinterpreted as images and cultural narratives.

Photo: Andrea Pompili with Ambassador Gianluigi Benedetti and Silvana De Maio, Director of the Italian Institute of Culture in Tokyo.

ROMEO Collection
ROMEO Roma | Italy

The five-star luxury hotel, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, founded by Pritzker Prize laureate Zaha Hadid, is set within a 16th-century palace overlooking Piazza del Popolo in Rome. As part of the Romeo Collection, the project creates a dialogue between historical fabric and contemporary architectural language.

Arch. Andrea Pompili collaborated with the design team on the hotel’s interior design and contributed to developing the Romeo Collection’s brand identity. She also led the implementation of the modern and contemporary art collection, commissioning site-specific works in dialogue with the architecture.

The collection includes artists such as Ugo Nespolo, Enrico Fedrigoli, Mimmo Paladino, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Marisa Zattini, Mark Kostabi, Christian Leperino, Ara Stark, Maeda Kamari, and Luca Pignatelli.

She also authored and designed the art catalogs for Romeo Roma and Romeo Napoli, the latter housed in a building designed by Kenzo Tange.

Art is fully integrated into the architectural narrative, shaping a layered and immersive spatial experience.

Wings of Stone | Marisa Zattini
Tresigallo | Italy

Ali di Pietra by Marisa Zattini, curated by Arch. Andrea Pompili was presented as part of the “Metaphysical Days” in Tresigallo, Italy. The exhibition unfolds from a central image—an eagle’s feather inscribed as a calligram on a 19th-century letter—creating a dialogue between text, image, and memory.

Writing transforms into a visual form, where the word becomes a sign in a continuous, reciprocal movement. The works develop through an interplay of light and shadow, enriched by symbolic elements such as the star-marked hourglasses Fragilis mortalitas, evoking the tension between finite time and timeless consciousness.

Ali di Pietra becomes a meditation on time and transformation, in which sign, matter, and imagination converge into a suspended, contemplative space.

Fires of Love | Imago Dominae |            Out Loud: Writing Poetry with Music Cesena | Italy

Curated by Arch. Andrea Pompili, Fuochi d’Amore (Fires of Love) brings poetry into the public realm under the arcades of Cesena, transforming a space of passage into a place of listening and encounter.

The project explores knowledge as an act of listening with vision, where words resonate beyond conscious perception and poetry becomes a synaesthetic experience shaped by sound, rhythm, and atmosphere.

The voices of Gianfranco Lauretano, Monica Guerra, and Angela Fabbri create a layered sonic landscape in which language unfolds across form, emotion, and perception.

Fuochi d’Amore becomes a shared, ephemeral experience capable of transforming space, memory, and time.

Alfabeths & Memories | Rosetta Berardi & Maeda Kamari
Cesena | Italy

Alfabeti & Memorie, curated by Arch. Andrea Pompili brings together Rosetta Berardi and Maeda Kamari in the 19th-century Church of Santa Cristina in Cesena. The exhibition is part of Cosmografie & Alfabeti, a curatorial program exploring the visual and symbolic power of the world’s alphabets.

On the main floor, Berardi’s works transform letters drawn from different writing systems into abstract, symbolic forms, where language dissolves into image. In the crypt, Maeda Kamari’s shodō explores calligraphy as gesture and presence, freeing signs from linguistic meaning and revealing them as pure form.

The installation includes eight ceramic plates with kanji and the Prayer of Peace, a large-scale ink work documenting a live performance. Together, the exhibition creates a dialogue between cultures and writing systems, where the alphabet becomes both meaning and abstraction.

Cosmographies & Alphabets | Tapestry of Light: Writing became an Image
Cesena | Italy

Part of Cosmografie & Alfabeti (Cosmographies & Alphabets), the exhibition, curated by Arch. Andrea Pompili presents new works by Gianluca Bosi in the Church of San Zenone, Cesena.

The works consist solely of words inscribed on papyrus, in which writing becomes an image and language dissolves into abstraction. Through layered textures and calligraphic structures, the artist develops a silent visual language rooted in historical calligraphic traditions.

At the center of the exhibition is Cosmografia biblica (Biblical Cosmography), a monumental calligram (900 × 150 cm) developed over three years, accompanied by a series of smaller works.

Within the sacred space of the church, the project reactivates calligraphy as a meditative practice, dissolving boundaries between art, language, and spirituality.

Mirna Manni: of Small and Big Things
San Mauro Pascoli | Italy

Co-curated by Arch. Andrea Pompili and Arch. Marisa Zattini, the exhibition by Mirna Manni, is presented at Villa Torlonia, marking the 170th anniversary of Giovanni Pascoli.

Conceived as a contemporary homage to one of Italy’s major poets, the project explores themes of intimacy, memory, life, and death through a layered visual language. Ceramic sculptures, paintings, and embroidered poetic texts—interwoven with natural fragments—compose a lyrical and immersive environment that echoes Pascoli’s poetics.

The exhibition presents nine installations, alongside a symbolic “beneaugurale” work. As noted by Andrea Pompili in the catalog, Mirna Manni’s practice brings together painting, sculpture, and “stitched” words into a single expressive gesture in which matter and language converge.

The project unfolds as a contemplative space, where art invites reflection on the “small and great things” of human experience.