PERFORMER: A young man
PROJECTION: Elia Kazan, Viva Zapata! , 1952
16 mm film, black and white, sound, 115 min.
DIMENSIONS: Variable
Stool: 72 × 40 × 40 cm
Projector: 92 × 20 × 63 cm
Speaker: 25 × 12 × 15 cm
Easel: 78 × 48 × 110 cm
DOCUMENTATION: Photographs, video
RE-ENACTMENTS: Yes
COLLECTION: Fabio Mauri Estate, Rome
CATALOGUE: PR_1975_3320
A projection on a performer consisting of a 16mm-film projector placed in front of a shirtless young man seated on a stool, on whose torso the Elia Kazan film Viva Zapata! was projected. Starring Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn, the film is the biopic of Emiliano Zapata, a leading figure in the Mexican revolution of 1909–1919, who defended the peasants against Dictator Porfirio Diaz. The work opened the ‘Senza ideologia’ exhibition at the Teatro in Trastevere in Rome in 1975, where Le Proiezioni (The Projections) were presented for the first time. In one of his diaries, Mauri wrote: ‘The first room houses a figure of a man, his head covered in a balaclava as if it were a modern-day war helmet. Viva Zapata!, a noble film about a noble and revolutionary character, is projected onto him, with intensely romantic revolutionarity.’ From the very beginning, as Mauri specified in the same journal, the title of the exhibition is belied: ‘Senza ideologia was so titled because this exhibition lives in ideology, it’s filled with it. Professionally, the title alludes to ongoing controversies surrounding the identity of ideological art in the field of the linguistic avant-garde.’ The work was later presented with the young man barefaced, without a balaclava.
1975, Rome, Teatro in Trastevere, Senza Ideologia: Azione di Fabio Mauri dal ciclo Oscuramento, 9 December.
1978, Geneva, Fondazione Patino, Sans nouvelles de l’Europe, 25 May.
1978, Toronto, A Space, Fabio Mauri at A Space, 11–12 October.
1994, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Fabio Mauri. Opere e Azioni 1954-1994, 21 June – 5 October, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Cossu.
1997, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, La stanza degli specchi: Arte e film dal 1945, 2 July – 1 September, curated by Kerry Brougher (travelling: 1996, Los Angeles).
2003, Tourcoing-Lille, Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Fabio Mauri – L’écran mental, 1 March – 27 April, curated by Dominique Païni.
2015-2016, Milan, Palazzo della Triennale, Ennesima. Una mostra di sette mostre sull’arte italiana, 26 November 2015 – 6 March 2016, curated by Vincenzo De Bellis.
2016-2017, Naples, Museo Madre, Retrospettiva a luce solida, 26 November 2016 – 6 March 2017, curated by Laura Cherubini, Andrea Viliani.
“Senza ideologia di Fabio Mauri”, in Flash Art, no. 60–61, Giancarlo Politi Editore, Milan, December 1975, p. 15.
Fabio Mauri. Opere e Azioni 1954-1994, exhibition catalogue, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, edited by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Cossu (Milan / Rome: Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori / Carte Segrete, 1994), pp. 155–161 (ill.).
Massimo Mininni, Arte in scena: La performance in Italia 1965-1980 (Ravenna: Danilo Montanari Editore, 1995), p. 135.
L’incognita dell’altro, exhibition catalogue, Sala dei Templari, Molfetta (Bari), edited by Giacomo Zaza (Molfetta: Comune di Molfetta, 2002), pp. 16, 49 (ill.), 118.
Adachiara Zevi, “L'arte ‘saggistica’ di Fabio Mauri”, in L’architettura – cronache e storia, no. 575, Rome, 2003, p. 671 (ill.).
Elisabetta Catalano, Le fotografie, edited by Laura Cherubini (Turin: Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 2005), p. 219 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Scritti in mostra. L’avanguardia come zona 1958-2008, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2008), p. 311 (ill.).
Elisabetta Catalano, Work with Fabio Mauri, edited by Laura Cherubini (Milan: Maretti Editore, 2013), pp. 94–95 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, exhibition catalogue, Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires, edited by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (Buenos Aires, 2014), pp. 4–5 (ill.).
Ennesima. Una mostra di sette mostre sull’arte italiana, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo della Triennale, Milan, edited by Vincenzo De Bellis (Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2015), Vol. “Guida”, pp. 148–149 (ill.), Vol. “La performance dal tempo sospeso: il tableau vivant tra realtà e rappresentazione”, p. 54 (ill.) .
Fabio Mauri. Archivio di memoria, edited by Dionigi Mattia Gagliardi (Rome: Numero cromatico editore, 2015), pp. 138–139 (ill.).
Valérie Da Costa, Fabio Mauri: le passé en actes (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2018), no. 115, p. 206 (ill.).
The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance, exhibition catalogue, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, edited by Vincenzo De Bellis (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2020), p. 28 (ill.).
