Keita Miyazaki - Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Roma

The Eternal Duality – Là dove scorre l’acqua, tra storia e rinascita

The Eternal Duality – Là dove scorre l’acqua, tra storia e rinascita Keita Miyazaki

Curated by Pier Paolo Scelsi and co-curated by Ilaria Cera (CREA), with artistic direction by Riccardo Freddo (Rosenfeld Gallery), coordinated by IUVART – LoveItaly and with the support of John Cabot UniversityOne year after its return to the city, the Nymphaeum of Villa Giulia opens its doors to contemporary art.From October 10 to November 2, 2025, Keita Miyazaki transforms the most significant site of Villa Giulia into a story of rebirth, blending origami, abandoned engines, and post-industrial visions.

From October 10 to November 2, 2025, the Nymphaeum of Villa Giulia in Rome, National Etruscan Museum (ETRU), opens to contemporary art, hosting the solo exhibition by Japanese artist Keita Miyazaki, The Eternal Duality – Là dove scorre l’acqua, tra storia e rinascita (The Eternal Duality – Where the Water Flows between History and Rebirth), curated by Pier Paolo Scelsi, with co-curation by Ilaria Cera and artistic direction by Riccardo Freddo. The exhibition reflects on the fragility of modernity and the possible harmony between past and future through a series of sculptures and installations created from the encounter of industrial materials, paper, and light and sound elements, in dialogue with the history and architecture of the space.Among the most intimate and hidden corners of the Villa, the Nymphaeum, recently restored and reopened to the public, becomes a living space for experimentation and vision; a new narrative born from the collaboration between the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia (ETRU), IUVART – LoveItaly, CREA – Cantieri per il Contemporaneo, and Rosenfeld Gallery in London, who together present an unprecedented project in the heart of the city.The exhibition features works by Keita Miyazaki. Born in Tokyo in 1983, Miyazaki lives and works between Japan and the United Kingdom. After witnessing the 2011 tsunami firsthand, he developed a radical poetic practice that interrogates the fragility of the world through materials: abandoned car engines, industrial metals, folds of origami paper, sewn felt, and sounds from urban life intertwine in his sculptures, evoking worlds that oscillate between apocalypse and rebirth. The artist recovers the ruins of our modernity to transform them into an aesthetics of reconciliation.His works are hybrid, biomorphic bodies in which the sound element – inspired by Japanese supermarket jingles or subway melodies – disrupts the static nature of classical sculpture, evoking the persistence of reality. A language that defies canonical definitions, it now, at the Nymphaeum, meets the historical layers of the site: the architecture of the past hosts a contemporary thought reflecting on transience, the ephemeral, and legacy. Keita Miyazaki was selected and awarded at CREA OPEN 2025, which featured over 4,000 artists from 104 countries, receiving the special prize for a site-specific solo exhibition at the Nymphaeum of Villa Giulia.With The Eternal Duality Miyazaki initiates an open dialogue with Italian 16th-century art, expressed here through the splendid architecture, polychrome marbles, and the monumentality of the fountains, creating an immersive journey that reflects on the fragility of existence and the hidden beauty in the ruins of our time. The Nymphaeum thus becomes not only a symbol of architectural regeneration but also a place of thought and creation, where the contemporary is not an intrusion, but a narrative possibility.While the exhibition is the first step of a broader project that in the coming months will bring the artist to other Italian museum spaces, from Palazzo Tozzoni in Imola to Ca’ Pesaro in Venice, the project The Eternal Duality confirms the shared commitment of the partners to enhance Italian cultural heritage through artistic languages capable of speaking to the present and opening new imaginaries. 

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