Friends and family

With Friends and family, Maja Arte Contemporanea inaugurates its collaboration with Monica Stambrini on Thursday, March 12, 2026, at 6 PM, at Via di Monserrato 30 in Rome, marking the first public presentation of her painting practice. “In the language of finance, the initial capital required to launch a new venture is known as ‘love capital.’ It consists of three elements—Friends, Family, and Fools—which together form the foundation of any new project: a reminder that without relationships—and a measure of daring—one gets nowhere.” As Eleonora Marangoni writes in the text accompanying the exhibition, it is this ‘love capital’ that sheds light on the meaning of Friends and family. A filmmaker and writer active internationally for over twenty years, Stambrini has worked across genres and formats, guided by a sustained curiosity about the body, identity, and human connection. Since 2023, she has developed a painting practice alongside her cinematic work, presented here to the public for the first time. On view are twenty works made between 2024 and 2025. In Marangoni’s words, they are “carefully observed snapshots—children, friends, lovers, urban spaces and domestic details, loved ones or striking strangers—forming dense, luminous portraits and scenes, charged with the energy of beginnings and vibrant with the intensity of long-awaited gestures.” These paintings probe bonds, linger on expressions, trace bodies, and register spaces, with a gaze at once intense and ironic—attuned to others and resistant to conformity. “Each seems to pursue a question, to probe an intimacy.” There is no nostalgia or complacency here, but rather a vital tension toward what unfolds in the present—or perhaps toward what continually escapes it. In this sense, Friends and family is not merely an expression of intimacy, but an act of trust: trust in bonds, in the freedom of one’s gaze, and in the possibility of beginning something for no reason other than the desire to do so. The exhibition coincides with a significant moment for the gallery, which marks its twentieth anniversary on April 1, 2026.