Isgrò erases racial laws: a work with pedagogical value

As part of the Quirinale Contemporaneo 2020 project, created in 2019 with the aim of “incorporating contemporary art and design into the more traditional context of presidential venues,” seventy-one new works have been added to last year’s acquisitions. These include thirty-eight works of art granted free of charge by the artists or the foundations that represent them and thirty-three design objects donated by the companies that make them. The artists include Bertozzi & Casoni, Alberto Burri, Piero Manzoni, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Vedova, Emilio Isgrò, Mario Ceroli, Gillo Dorfles, Franca Ghitti and many others.

President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella ’s preface reads, “I am confident that, keeping in mind our roots and among them the Italian artistic genius, admired in every part of the world, we will be able to contribute, all together, to give further momentum and solidity to the country’s future.”

The works include paintings, sculptures, installations and works of environmental art, and a room was reserved for each artist. Among others, Ceroli contextualized his equestrian sculpture by building a large carpet of pebbles and bricks, Pistoletto conceived a Third Paradise made of native plant essences. Emilio Isgrò created a highly symbolic work that leads one to reflect on history and current events: the erasure of the racial laws. His new “erasure” is entitled He Who I Am (2020) and has been placed in the Ambassadors Hall.

The idea for that theme, Isgrò himself said, came to her spontaneously. “In those days a gloomy and heavy air had descended on the country. The poisons of irrational Europe were coming back into circulation. New signs of anti-Semitism were resurfacing. Even Liliana Segre, whom the president of the Republic appointed senator for life partly because, by defending Jews, she defends the dignity of Italians not infected by racism, was affected. It then had some influence on me that in my land, Sicily, Jews had perhaps their best fate: welcomed from the beginning and without the need to blend in.”

An erasure with pedagogical value: remembering the tragic nature of dictatorship and the Shoah.

In the image, Emilio Isgrò, He Who I Am (2020).

Isgrò erases racial laws: a work with pedagogical value

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