From May 27 to July 27, 2025, Pavilion 9a of the Mattatoio in Rome presents Roger Ballen Animalism, promoted by the Cultural Department of Rome Capital and by Special Company Palaexpo, organized by Special Company Palaexpo in collaboration with ISTMO, curated by Ales- sandro Dandini de Sylva in collaboration with Marguerite Rossouw and with a sound installation by Cobi van Tonder.

Roger Ballen (born in New York in 1950, has been living in South Africa for over forty years) is one of the most prominent and well-known contemporary photographers. With Animalism, a research he has been conducting for over two decades, he explores the deep and often unsettling relationship between humans and animals. The images on display blur the line between human and animal behavior, questioning the very nature of this distinction. Designed for the exhibition space of the Mattatoio in Rome – a former slaughterhouse where animals were once killed for human consumption – the exhibition is conceived as a single installation: a typically "ballenesque" theater, where absurdity and primal instincts reign. The Mattatoio itself, a symbol of historical violence and human dominance over animals, becomes

part of the artwork, reinvented as a space for reflection.

The exhibition unfolds in three environments offering an immersive and contemplative experience of Ballen's works: from a bright introductory space where a selection of twenty-one photographs taken between 1996 and 2016 is displayed, to a central dark space animated by eight projectors showing, asynchronously, over eighty photographs from Ballen's main projects, including Outland, Shadow Chamber, Boarding House, Asylum of the Birds and Roger’s Rats; and finally, to the space characterized by four lightboxes and a video animation from the series Apparitions. The central environment of the Pavilion, immersed in darkness, is designed to engage and envelop visitors. The photographs arranged chronologically, from the entrance to the back, trace a path that reflects the evolution of the artist's visual language from a more documentary practice to an intense staging of the photographic space, to the most experimental and pictorially impactful creations.