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On the occasion of the celebrations for the Day of Remembrance 2020, from January 27 to February 23, the Palazzo Vecchio Museum will host the installation Il Muro Occidentale o del Pianto by Fabio Mauri in the Sala dei Gigli, a project Museo Novecento OFF conceived and curated by artistic director of the Museo Novecento Sergio Risaliti.
Fabio Mauri (Rome 1926 – 2009), protagonist of the Solo cycle at the Museo Novecento (from 24 January to 30 April 2020) and one of the major exponents of the neo-avant-gardes of the second half of the twentieth century, has long addressed in his own creative parable the paths of ideologies and the theme of memory, questioning the role of “evil” in the history of humanity.
On Monday 27 January at 13.00 in the Sala dei Gigli in Palazzo Vecchio the inauguration of the installation is scheduled in the presence of the councilors of the Municipality of Florence Tommaso Sacchi, Sara Funaro and Alessandro Martini and the artistic director of the Museo Novecento Sergio Risaliti. This will be followed by a short talk by Professor Giacomo Marramao, a philosopher linked to the Roman artist by a long friendship, entitled The horror of the Shoah in the art of Fabio Mauri.
“If pain did not exist – said Mauri – language would have ceased to exist for some time“.
The installation The Western or Wailing Wall is a four-meter wall, formed by a pile of suitcases and trunks stacked in an orderly manner, of different sizes and materials (wood, leather, canvas). It was first presented by Mauri in 1993 at the XLV Venice Biennale. It was later installed in 2011 at the MAXXI in Rome and again in Venice at the 2013 Biennale. With a strong impact, it recalls the themes of exile, forced exodus, migrations, restoring their variety and complexity.
If on the one hand the wall is uniform and regular like a real wall, on the other hand it appears disjointed and with variable volumes recalling, according to the artist “the modern composition of transmigrations” which “Dictated by numerous causes are excessively enigmatic to be immediately composed and deciphered “. “In the ravines of the” Western or Wailing Wall “, the Israelites insert paper tickets with prayers: relating to the soul, the affections, the bodies, how to live life on earth – concluded Mauri in the accompanying text for the installation -. I simulated them in a single roll of canvas. A sort of prayer of art. The Wall is the place, say the Israelites, where God undoubtedly listens: it is the place of value, therefore. A plant also grows there, a sign of a continuation of mixed existence that mute and square stones or empty and inert suitcases not even they can prevent”.
Installation View
