Where and when
From
To
Altre sedi
Who
Sergio Risaliti
Artistic Director of Museo Novecento
Giacomo Marramao
Philosopher and friend of the roman artist
On the occasion of the Day of Memory 2020, from January 27 to February 23, the Museum of Palazzo Vecchio will host in the Sala dei Gigli an installation “Il Muro Occidentale o del Pianto” by Fabio Mauri, a Museo Novecento OFF’s project, curated by the Artistic Director of Museo Novecento Sergio Risaliti. Fabio Mauri (Rome 1926-2009), protagonist of the cycle Solo at Museo Novecento (from January 24 to April 30, 2020) and one of the main exponents of the second 900’s neo-avantgard, for long time, in his creative path, he has faced the memory issues, querying himself about the role of “evil” in the history of humanity.
“If sorrow didn’t exist – Mauri said – language would have ceased to exist long ago”.
Monday, january 27 at 1 o’clock in Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, will take place the inauguration of the installation in the presence of the Councillors of the city of Florence, Tommaso Sacchi, Sara Funaro and Alessandro Martini and the director of Museo Novecento Sergio Risaliti. To follow a short talk by Professor Giacomo Marramao, philosopher linked to the Roman artist by a long friendship, with the title L’orrore della shoah nell’arte di Fabio Mauri ( the Horror of Shoah in Fabio Mauri’s art).
The installation Il Muro Occidentale o del Pianto is a wall, 4 metres high, made by suitecases and trunks stacked in orderly manner, of different size and materials (wood, leather, canva). It was presented for the first time by Mauri in 1993 at XLV Biennale di Venezia. Later it was installed in 2011 at MAXXI in Rome, and again at Biennale in Venice in 2013. High-impact, it recalls themes like exile, forced exodus, migrations with variety and complexity.
If by one side the wall is uniform ad regular as a real wall, from the other side it is disconnected and with variable volumes recalling, in the artist’s idea, “the modern composition of transmigrations” that “Dictated by the numerous causes that present themselves too much enigmatic to be immediatly composed and decrypted”. “In the crevices of “Muro Occidentale o del Pianto”, Israelites slip paper tickets with prayers: related to the soul, affections, bodies, to how to live on earth – concluded Mauri in the accompaignment text of the installation -. I simulated them in a single roll of canvas. A sort of prayer for art. The Muro is the place, Isreaelites say, where God certainly hears: it is the place of value, then. There it grows also a plant, symbol of a continuation of mixed existence that mute and squared stones or empty and inert suitcases not even can prevent”.
We remember also that January 27 for the Day of Memory Museo Novecento will be free all day long.