PERFORMER: A young woman
PROJECTION: Marc de Gastyne, La merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d’Arc , 1929
8 mm, black and white, silent, 125 min.
DIMENSIONS: Variable
Stool: 72 × 40 × 40 cm
Projector: 92 × 20 × 63 cm
Speaker: 25 × 12 × 15 cm
Easel: 78 × 48 × 110 cm
RE-ENACTMENTS: Yes
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: Fabio Mauri Estate, Rome
CATALOGUE: PR _1975_3321
A projection onto a performer consisting of an 8mm-film projector placed in front of a young woman seated on a stool on whose chest the Marc de Gastyne film La merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d’Arc was projected. The nude girl wears a pair of shoes, highlighting her femininity. The silent film tells the story of the life and passion of Joan of Arc, condemned for heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen. The work was first shown at the Galleria Punto Blu in Reggio Calabria on French actress and singer Isabelle de Valvert. In one of his diaries, Mauri wrote: ‘Joan of Arc is projected onto the Negro [sic] singer Isabelle de Valvert, who here is not a symbol of any race so much as a young woman fighting for truth against power and the men who hold it. The result is a parable that fearfully reflects on this battle’s outcome.’ The work was exhibited that same year at the Teatro in Trastevere in Rome along with other projections on people and objects and subsequently, using different performers, on many other occasions. The version on Isabelle de Valvert was photographically recorded in a studio by Elisabetta Catalano. One of these shots, of the woman from the back, was used in the 1977 work Seduta su l’ombra (cat. 3390).
1975, Reggio Calabria, Galleria Punto Blu, Senza Arte, 25 October – 12 November.
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, Vancouver, Pumps Gallery, Without, 24 September.
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.
1996, Los Angeles, MOCA – The Museum of Contemporary Art, Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film since 1945, 16 March – 28 July, curated by Kerry Brougher.
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.
2016-2017, Naples, Museo Madre, Retrospettiva a luce solida, 26 November 2016 – 6 March 2017, curated by Laura Cherubini, Andrea Viliani.
2017, Rome, Villa Medici, Fabio Mauri: Incontro, performance e presentazione di opere con Andrea Viliani e Laura Cherubini, 30 November.
“Senza ideologia di Fabio Mauri”, in Flash Art, no. 60–61, Giancarlo Politi Editore, Milan, December 1975, p. 15.
Fabio Mauri, Le proiezioni 1970-1978 (Macerata / Falconara: La nuova foglio editrice - piano inclinato / Galleria del Falconiere, 1978), n.p. (ill.).
Philip Monk, “Fabio Mauri at "A Space"”, in Artists Review, no. 3, Toronto, 27 October 1978, p. 2.
Fabio Mauri, “Azione. Teoria e illustrazione”, in La tradizione del nuovo, year 4, no. 13, Pinacoteca comunale, exhibition catalogue, Multigrafie, Loggetta Lombardesca, Ravenna, 1980, p. 17 (ill.).
Lara-Vinca Masini, Arte contemporanea. La linea dell’unicità: Arte come volontà e non rappresentazione (Florence: Giunti, 1989), p. 1068 (ill.).
Massimo Mininni, Arte in scena: La performance in Italia 1965-1980 (Ravenna: Danilo Montanari Editore, 1995), p. 135.
Angela Madesani, Le icone fluttuanti. Storia del cinema d'artista e della videoarte in Italia (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2002), p. 179 (ill.).
Lara-Vinca Masini, L’Arte del Novecento n.6: Dall’Espressionismo al Multimediale (Rome: Gruppo editoriale L’Espresso, 2003), p. 1068 (ill.).
Elisabetta Catalano, Le fotografie, edited by Laura Cherubini (Turin: Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 2005), pp. 216–217 (ill.).
Elisabetta Catalano, Work with Fabio Mauri, edited by Laura Cherubini (Milan: Maretti Editore, 2013), pp. 78–87, 98 (ill.).
