A wooden trunk, open and resting on the ground on its side, and a box frame painted the same black colour, form an opaque, monochrome sculpture. Mauri used containers of personal belongings – often entire lives travelling or on the move – such as suitcases and trunks in several works as symbols of mankind and human history (inv. 325, 441, 444, 674), as well as empty frame elements – ‘The frame is the start of the image’,1 he once wrote. Here, it resembles a black Schermo (Screen), a ‘projector of invisibility’ in which, according to Mauri, ‘History lurks’2 (see also inv. 179, 310, 442).

1. F. Mauri, ‘Riflessioni antiscientifiche’, 1986, unpublished text, Fabio Mauri Archive, Rome.
2. F. Mauri, ‘Un gigantesco pantografo e due monete da 100 lire’, in Trovaroma (La Repubblica supplement), Rome, 6 December 1990, p. 100.