Metamorphoses of the Sacred - Works in dialogue with Siena

From February 20 to the end of August 2026, the former stable of the Santa Maria della Scala museum complex hosts the reinstallation of the exhibition Metamorphoses of the Sacred by Teodora Axente, with a selection of 14 works. The exhibition, curated by Riccardo Freddo and Michelina Eremita, was conceived on the occasion of the artist's appointment by the Municipality of Siena as painter of the Palio of August 16, 2026.

The Romanian artist's first institutional solo exhibition in Italy, Metamorphoses of the Sacred is a radically site-specific project that puts contemporary painting into dialogue with the history of Santa Maria della Scala. The exhibition path is structured in thematic totems that convey an intense and visionary style, deeply connected to the spiritual memory of the ancient hospital.

Conceived at the initiative of the President of the Foundation Cristiano Leone and produced in collaboration with the Rosenfeld Gallery, London, the exhibition enhances the historical heritage through a contemporary language, in which hybrid images and evoked presences renew the sense of the sacred. With this project, Teodora Axente – among the most significant voices of contemporary European painting – opens new temporal gateways in the heart of Sienese history.

Teodora Axente (born in 1984) lives and works in Cluj, Romania. A member of the new generation of artists of the Fabrica de Pensule — the historic brush factory of Cluj transformed into one of the most vital cultural centers in Eastern Europe — Axente has developed a deeply narrative painting practice, where the image becomes a place of introspection and metamorphosis. Her works portray enigmatic human figures, often accompanied by animals or surrounded by objects with strong symbolic power: masks, domestic elements, relics, or mysterious presences that seem to come from a dream or from a collective memory. Through these apparitions, Axente explores the tensions between instinct and consciousness, vulnerability and transformation, constructing a universe poised between the sacred and the everyday.