Studio Orma (Rome) × BcmA (Berlin)
12 September – 1 October 2026
Whom are we addressing when our eyes are closed?
Opening / Vernissage
Saturday, 12 September 2026, from 18:00
With the live performance stick, split by Laura Eftychia Papachristos
Finissage
Thursday, 1 October 2026
Visiting hours
Thursday & Friday: 16:00 – 20:00
Saturday: 12:00 – 17:00
Venue
BcmA — Berlin con mucho arte
Audre-Lorde-Straße 78, 10997 Berlin
Institutional religion has lost much of its former authority, yet the need for transcendence, ritual and inner guidance has not disappeared. Modernity secularised the world; postmodernity weakened the credibility of universal narratives and stable symbolic systems. What remains is a more uncertain, atomised spiritual landscape — one in which prayer persists, even though its language, its recipient and its purpose have become far less clearly defined.
With Eyes Closed approaches prayer not as a profession of faith, but as a framework for relating to transcendence. The act itself remains recognisable: waiting, concentrating, meditating, surrendering, orienting the body, opening an inner space in which something not entirely under our control might become perceptible. In the sense described by Simone Weil, prayer is not forceful concentration but a suspension of the self — a moment when thought becomes empty, available, receptive. Despite our modern scepticism, we still find ourselves closing our eyes: at the passing of a loved one, or in a moment of stillness.
So whom are we addressing? Who is the listener? A remnant of older cultures and institutions — or are we capable of imagining new forms of relation to transcendence that fit our new shape of living?
The exhibition proposes an equivalence between artistic practice and the act of prayer, or at least the possible presence of one within the other. Several works trace how motifs and symbols historically belonging to the religious sphere survive and transform through art into new life: iconography treated as malleable material, taking the shape of each artist’s personal history and psychic patterns. Spirituality becomes less doctrinal and more experiential — and, in the same movement, more unstable.
With Eyes Closed does not converge on a single answer. It points instead to the different paths of enquiry that open in front of us, and that artistic practice may help us tread.
Artists
Irene Mathilda Alaimo — levitation series (2026), three works
Photography and graphite drawing on the threshold between faith and scepticism, tracing the moment an image becomes evidence. An archive of “uncertain revelation” that invites attention without ever forcing belief.
Marco Celentani — Io sono (2023), painting on canvas
A sphere of red and orange filling the field of vision: sun, divinity, centre of gravity. The title — I am — turns the mind’s eye inward, to the root of one’s own sense of being in the world.
Fabrizio Cicero — Spalanca (2026), light, charcoal drawing and spatial framing
A luminous forest behind a rigid metal grid recalling a church window or gate. Is the forest trapped, are we protected, or are we the ones locked out?
Margaux Compte-Mergier — Il suolo ricorda (2026), silicone floor installation
A moulded, eroded surface carrying the traces of the street — damaged skin, archaeological site, contemporary prayer rug. Placed on the ground, it asks the body where to stand, where not to tread, whether to observe, enter, or kneel.
Hamid Hoveyda — In stillness, the dancing (2026), multi-panel installation and artist book
Figures with raised arms, repeated like cave painting: invocation, surrender, celebration, stripped of artifice. Alongside them, an artist book — a personal scripture, open on a lectern for a direct, divination-like encounter.
Fred Unruh — OOLS, OKKE, TAINT (2026), carved wood
Carved through patient, meditative gesture, these works hang like icons of an imageless entity. Where the holy image should be, there is a void: absence, or a gateway to a spirituality that contemplates emptiness as creative potential.
Performance
Laura Eftychia Papachristos — stick, split
Activating the exhibition at the vernissage. Working on the structure of the unconscious and on subject–object relations, the performance uses linguistic and gestural repetition to interrogate the possible presence — or absence — of the other as the object of prayer.
About Studio Orma
Studio Orma is an independent exhibition space and curatorial project dedicated to contemporary art, founded in 2024 by Edoardo Innaro and Marco Celentani in the heart of Rome. Born out of a dense network of collaborations between young creators and the urgent need for spaces where artistic and philosophical experimentation can meet, its name refers to the archaic dimension of expression. Conceived as a “humanistic laboratory,” Orma’s programme focuses on research into the links between psyche, image, body, matter and representation.
With Eyes Closed is Studio Orma’s first exhibition in Berlin, realised in collaboration with BcmA.
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