DUSE : Divine Caricatures On Stage

Academic project for an exhibit design course, developed with Federica Rezzonico and Valentina Troncanetti: an exhibition marking one hundred years since the death of Eleonora Duse, designed for Rome's Teatro Verdi, then under renovation. Digging into her figure, one under-explored element emerged: the many caricatures portraying Duse between the late 19th and early 20th century.

The path unfolds in stages: an introduction that frames caricature as a genre and sets it alongside Duse's figure; an entrance into the stalls through a corridor of distorting mirrors, where visitors "caricature" themselves live, before even entering the hall; an exhibition room with lightboxes and projections of original caricatures, paired with quotes from period articles; and an interactive finale on stage, split by a panel that separates the interactive tables at the back from the three vertical LED walls at the front: here, custom software generates a caricature of the visitor's face, adjustable through parameters and projected at large scale.

The concept: visitors enter as spectators of the exhibition and leave as performers, the stars of their own caricature.

I handled the 3D design of the entire installation (modeling and rendering the spaces), as well as contributing to the concept during group brainstorming.