Oltre le mura di Sant’Orsola (June - September 2023)
Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar and Alberto Ruce tell forgotten stories

The first exhibition of the future museum, Beyond the Walls of Sant’Orsola, involved two young contemporary artists who created an art project inspired by the women who once inhabited the place.

In the space of the former church, the street artist Alberto Ruce created a suspended installation inspired by the story of Lisa Gherardini, the presumed model of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, who spent her last years of life in the convent of Sant’Orsola.

Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar’s work enters into dialogue with the dispersed heritage of Sant’Orsola and questions the condition of women within the walls of convents. Her oil-on-canvas triptych, titled Noli me tangere, reinterprets and actualizes the traditional iconography of saints’ martyrdom through a female lens.