the hollow men is the exhibition conceived for the Project Space at Palazzo Strozzi by Italian artist Giulia Cenci and curated by the Director General of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Arturo Galansino.
In her artistic practice, Giulia Cenci works with elements drawn from everyday life and the industrial world, transforming them into imaginary landscapes and habitats where scraps, remnants, and reclaimed materials merge with hybrid figures that blur the boundaries between human and animal. Her artworks challenge hierarchies and boundaries, presenting scenarios where every element seems to swing between recognizability and alteration.
At Palazzo Strozzi, through a site-specific project that combines sculpture, installation, and drawing, Giulia Cenci offers a vision populated by figures and structures belonging to a suspended time. The exhibition title references to the homonymous T. S. Eliot’s 1925 poem in which the “hollow men” are inert figures, caught in a limbo between life and death, incapable of action or redemption after the trauma of the First World War. Cenci’s “hollow men” become a metaphor for reflecting on the fragilities and contradictions of the human condition, between natural and artificial, past and present, memory and oblivion.
With this exhibition, Palazzo Strozzi inaugurates the Project Space, a new exhibition space dedicated to emerging art and conceived as a dynamic platform for experimentation and research in the heart of Florence. Accessible directly from the courtyard, this space integrates into the program of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, alongside the Piano Nobile, Courtyard, and Strozzina spaces, offering a new context within the Palazzo for projects aimed at fostering new opportunities for artistic production and engagement with the public.
Giulia Cenci
Born in Cortona in 1988, Giulia Cenci lives and works between Amsterdam and Cortona. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna (2007–2012), she continued her studies with a Master in Fine Arts at the St. Joost Academy in Den Bosch-Breda, Netherlands (2013–2015) and participated in the prestigious residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (2015–2017). Her works are included in numerous collections and have been exhibited at significant national and international institutions, including the 59th Venice Biennale The Milk of Dreams, the High Line in New York, MUDAM in Luxemburg, the MAXXI in Rome, and the Pecci Center in Prato. In 2023, Giulia Cenci exhibited at Palazzo Strozzi in the show Reaching for the Stars. From Maurizio Cattelan to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, realized in collaboration with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.
Credits: Giulia Cenci, dead dance (det.), 2022. Exhibition view The Milk of Dreams, 59th Venice Biennale, 2022. photo Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy the artist and La Biennale di Venezia. ©giulia cenci