COMPONENTS: Aluminium suitcases, photographs, neon light
DIMENSIONS: 262 × 250 × 45 cm
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: Fabio Mauri Estate, Rome
CATALOGUE: I_1996_444
Four columns of twelve aluminium suitcases form a nearly square wall, eight feet high. In the centre, among four smaller-format modules/cases, a photograph backlit by a neon light presents, on one side, the blue-tinged face of one of the young protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square just before being shot, and on the other, two policemen, the same age, in the act of pulling the trigger. ‘Lost faces, each of them, in the extraordinary and unnatural event of a shooting among people the same age. The young ones, their bird heads inside oversized uniforms, and the young men on their knees, their gaze fixed on a close yet empty horizon, could easily have swapped roles. The suspension of dismay was identical.’1 Made three years after Il Muro Occidentale o del Pianto (inv. 441), Cina Asia Nuova took up the motif of the wall of suitcases to reflect on ‘a modernity that is stainless, weightless, in impassive repetition, frigid from the emptiness it contains, a fierce wrapping. Like the woman (or man) cut into pieces, the body of humanity may easily be locked up inside it.’2 If in Muro Occidentale the ‘enclosed body’ is represented by the iconic image of the girl from Ebrea, contained inside an open suitcase, in Cina Asia Nuova it belongs to a young man – student or policeman – as an inexorable instrument of power: ‘Again, with indiscretion, I raise a square Wall (a fragment of the Chinese Wall) of modern injustice […] I erected a monument to a lost boy whose gaze I cannot forget.’3
1. F. Mauri, ‘Cina Asia Nuova’, in F. Mauri, Scritti in mostra. L'avanguardia come zona 1958–2008, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti, il Saggiatore, Milan, 2008, p. 103.
2. Ibid, p. 105.
3. Ibid.
1996, Rome, Opera Paese, Opera Paese, 9 November.
2004, Rome, Hotel Ripa – International Hotel Art Fair, RipArte 10, 26–28 November, curated by Martina Cavallarin.
2010-2011, Trieste, Castello di Miramare, Fabio Mauri: Un sognatore della ragione, 3 December 2010 – 27 February 2011, curated by Roberto Alberton.
2012, Milan, Palazzo Reale, Fabio Mauri – The End, 19 June – 23 September, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti.
2016-2017, Bergamo, GAMeC, Fabio Mauri: Arte per legittima difesa, 7 October 2016 – 15 January 2017, curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio.
2018, Castelbasso (Teramo), Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Fabio Mauri 1968-1978, 22 July – 2 September, curated by Laura Cherubini.
2021-2022, Milan, Palazzo Reale, Corpus Domini: Dal corpo glorioso alle rovine dell’anima, 27 October 2021 – 30 January 2022, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti.
2025-2026, Milan, Triennale Milano, Fabio Mauri. De Oppressione, 3 December 2025 – 15 February 2026, curated by Ilaria Bernardi.
Ludovico Pratesi, “E nel loft di Pietralata l'arte va in periferia”, in la Repubblica, Rome, 12 November 1996, p. 10.
Vito Apuleo, “Arte in periferia”, in Il Messaggero, Rome, 18 November 1996, p. 25.
Metamorfosi: Quaderni di Architettura e Arte, no. 39, Rome, 1999, .
RipArte: Decimo anniversario / Ten Year Anniversary, exhibition catalogue, Hotel Ripa – International Hotel Art Fair, Rome, edited by Achille Bonito Oliva, Jonathan Turner, Martina Cavallarin, Gianluca Marziani (Rome: Edizioni Drago, 2004), pp. 26–29, 88 (ill.).
Paolo D'Andrea, “Riparte”, in Segno, Year XXX, no. 200, Pescara, January–February 2005, p. 103 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Scritti in mostra. L’avanguardia come zona 1958-2008, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2008), pp. 102–105 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Io sono un ariano (Milan: Lampi di stampa, 2009), pp. 347–352 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri. Un sognatore della ragione, exhibition catalogue, Castello di Miramare, Trieste, edited by Federica Alberton (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2010), pp. 37–39 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri. The End, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo Reale, Milan, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (Milan: Skira, 2012), pp. 65–67 (ill.).
Maurizio Cecchetti, “Fabio Mauri, l'antitotalitario”, in Avvenire, Milan, 3 July 2012, p. 24 (ill.).
Federica Boràgina, Fabio Mauri. Che cosa è, se è, l’ideologia nell’arte (Catanzaro: Rubbettino editore, 2012), pp. 125–129, no. 32 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, exhibition catalogue, Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires, edited by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (Buenos Aires, 2014), pp. 56–57 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri. Arte per legittima difesa, exhibition catalogue, GAMeC, Bergamo, edited by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (Bergamo: GAMeC Books, 2016), pp. 38–39 (ill.).
Artribune, 14 October 2016 (https://www.artribune.com/report/2016/10/mostra-fabio-mauri-gamec-bergamo/), .
Fabio Mauri 1968-1978, exhibition catalogue, Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Castelbasso (Teramo), edited by Laura Cherubini (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2018), pp. 49–53 (ill.).
Mu6: Fabio Mauri a Castelbasso, Year XIII, no. 36, L'Aquila, August 2018, p. 3 (ill.).
Corpus Domini: Dal corpo glorioso alle rovine dell’anima, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo Reale, Milan, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (Venice: Marsilio, 2021), p. 123 (ill.).
Mauri, edited by Flaminio Gualdoni (Milan: Corriere della Sera, 2022), pp. 70–71 (ill.).
Vincenzo Trione, “L'oppressione libera tutti”, in la Lettura, Milan, 30 November 2025, pp. 42–43 (ill.).
