A graphic artwork created for the back cover of Opening magazine, Se la Sinistra va a Destra shows Sergio Cusani at a hearing during the Enimont trial, at which he was charged, along with leading First Republic politicians, for a mega-bribe intended to illegally finance the Italian Socialist Party. The photograph, which Mauri took from the La Repubblica newspaper dated 19 February 1994,1 shows financial adviser Cusani – who during his university years was a far-left activist in the Movimento Lavoratori per il Socialismo – turning from the dock to the right, trapped in a system of corruption in which Left and Right spoke the same language of illegality. Mauri wrote: ‘The rear cover of Opening magazine, published in Rome, with the words ‘Se la Sinistra va a Destra’ placed on the shoulder of Mr Cusani, who in the photo is moving from left to right. A political multiple, that is, a normative idea, hosted in another journal. It is related to Der Politische Ventilator […] What, then, is a political multiple? It is an artistic action directly aimed at a political target.’3 A few weeks after the magazine came out, at Mauri’s exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, the work’s original graphic design (inv. 374) was framed and hung on the wall above a shelf on which six issues of the magazine rested, five of which were turned to the back cover, their repetition emphasising the idea of a multiple. The installation was presented in this form at several subsequent exhibitions.

1. La Repubblica, 19 February 1994, p. 5.
2. F. Mauri in Fabio Mauri. Opere e azioni 1954–1994, catalogue of the exhibition (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome), edited by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Cossu, Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori e Carte Segrete, Rome, 1994, p. 132.
3. Ibid.