In the vibrant heart of Rome, where past and future meet every day, the construction site of the forthcoming Venezia Station on Metro Line C once again becomes a stage for contemporary art with Tools, the new installation by Elisabetta Benassi. It is the third intervention in the “Murales – contemporary art in the metro” project, conceived to transform the ten industrial silos overlooking Piazza Venezia into visual monuments to urban change.
Following the works by Pietro Ruffo and Marinella Senatore, Elisabetta Benassi chooses to portray the construction site not as a mere place of transit but as a living space shaped by hands, tools, and daily labour. Her work places the workers centre stage, capturing them as they hold the instruments with which they are building the city’s new infrastructure.
Powerful and evocative, Benassi’s installation deliberately draws on the Roman Baroque tradition: just as Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s angels on Ponte Sant’Angelo bear the symbols of Christ’s Passion, so the workers at the Piazza Venezia site hold their tools. This parallel weaves together the sacred and the secular, the ancient and the contemporary, bringing into the present the same tension between craftsmanship, devotion, and symbolic elevation.
The Murales project, promoted by the companies of the Metro C consortium with the patronage of Roma Capitale, aims to transform a major urban construction site into a space for collective storytelling. Piazza Venezia, a historic crossroads of city life, becomes a visual echo of the transformation underway: a place where the city can observe itself changing through the eyes of its artists.
Born in Rome in 1966, Elisabetta Benassi is among the most authoritative voices in Italian contemporary art. Her practice spans installation, video, and photography, placing at its core the cultural and political traces of modernity and exploring how memory shapes the present.
The unveiling of Tools coincides with a significant phase in the construction works: the second major phase has now begun, following months of archaeological excavations and the creation of the large slab that will define the future layout of the station. The new diaphragm walls that will complete the station “box” are set to begin early next year.
Tools, Elisabetta Benassi ph. Roma Capitale
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