Roger Ballen: Animalism
Until July 27, 2025, Pavilion 9a of Rome’s Mattatoio hosts “Roger Ballen Animalism,” promoted by Roma Capitale’s Department of Culture and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, organized by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in partnership with ISTMO. The exhibition is curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva with the assistance of Marguerite Rossouw and features a sound installation by Cobi van Tonder.
Roger Ballen is among today’s most prominent contemporary photographers. Animalism, an investigative series Ballen has pursued for over two decades, examines the profound and often unsettling relationship between humans and animals. The photographs on display challenge the boundaries separating human and animal behavior, provoking fundamental reflections on the very essence of this distinction. Conceived specifically for the Mattatoio exhibition space—a former slaughterhouse previously used for animal processing—the exhibition takes the form of a single, cohesive installation, a “Ballenesque” theater dominated by absurdity and primal impulses. The Mattatoio itself, symbolizing historical violence and human dominance over animals, is reimagined as an integral part of the exhibition, a space dedicated to contemplation.
The exhibition unfolds across three environments, providing an immersive yet contemplative encounter with Ballen’s work. It begins in a brightly lit introductory space featuring twenty-one photographs created between 1996 and 2016, then transitions into a central, darkened room animated asynchronously by eight projectors displaying over eighty images from Ballen’s significant series, including Outland, Shadow Chamber, Boarding House, Asylum of the Birds, and Roger’s Rats. Finally, visitors reach a space showcasing four lightboxes and a video animation from the Apparitions series. The pavilion’s dark central area is designed to immerse visitors fully. Photographs arranged chronologically from entrance to the rear illustrate the evolution of Ballen’s visual language—from documentary photography to increasingly staged scenes, culminating in his most experimental and painterly creations.
Through surreal imagery and a compelling dark absurdity, Animalism underscores the animal as both an external entity and a fundamental aspect of the human psyche, exposing deep connections between civilization and wilderness.
The exhibition includes a catalog published by Quodlibet, designed by Filippo Nostri, featuring a conversation between Roger Ballen and curator Alessandro Dandini de Sylva, along with reproductions of all exhibited works.
About the Author
Roger Ballen (b. 1950, New York) is an internationally acclaimed photographer renowned for his provocative and distinctive visual style. After completing degrees in psychology and geology, Ballen relocated to South Africa, where he has lived and worked for more than forty years. His photographic practice explores the complex and often unsettling intersections between reality, psychology, and imagination.
Ballen is celebrated for creating surreal and theatrical images that blur boundaries between human and animal, conscious and unconscious, civilized and primal. Through his evocative and psychologically charged photographs, installations, and films, Ballen confronts viewers with the deep, often disturbing layers of human experience.
His work has been exhibited extensively worldwide, held in numerous prestigious public collections, and documented in several influential books. Ballen continues to live and work in Johannesburg, South Africa, persistently pushing the boundaries of contemporary photography and visual storytelling.
