Fabio Viale brings his Pieta to Lampedusa, turned toward Libya, to send a message of welcome

On August 23 and 24, 2018, Fabio Viale ’s (Cuneo, 1975) Souvenir Pieta (Mother) arrives in Lampedusa, where it will be the focus of a performance by the artist, who made his Pieta in 2018. This is the continuation of Souvenir Pieta (Christ), made instead in 2007: in both works, Viale replicated Michelangelo’s Vatican Pieta on a 1:1 scale, adding a decisive perceptive gap to the great Renaissance masterpiece, since in the case of the 2007 work the Christ without the Mother was reproduced, while in the more recent one the Mother without the Son, symbolizing an anguished separation.

The next step in the work then took on a more conceptual dimension with the work Lucky Ehi presented on the occasion of the opening of the Milan branch of Galleria Poggiali. In his Lucky Ehi, Viale had placed on the Virgin’s knees, instead of Jesus, a young Nigerian Catholic who had escaped death and persecution, named Lucky Ehi, whom he had met at a refugee reception center in Turin. That white Carrara marble Madonna thus became a universal mother, of ages and religions, welcoming the last, taking on the guise of a woman in a veil and divesting herself of the connoted and thunderous Catholic bearing to become a universal figure veiled in a headdress of absolute mercy. In the Milan exhibition, the sculpture was accompanied by a 4-by-3-meter poster that took up the entire gallery wall and depicted Lucky Hey naked in the place of Christ, and a sound recording of his story as a migrant.

The new step in Fabio Viale’s project is now to place the orphaned Christ sculpture on a beach in Lampedusa, an extremely symbolic place, and direct it toward Libya right by the sea, to represent the magniloquent synthesis of a message of welcome and universality. The Mother is ready to house on herself, in her sorrowful emptiness, the universality of the man who arrives from the sea, offering her womb to all humanity. The performance will be documented by an extensive photographic reportage.

Pictured: Fabio Viale, Souvenir Pieta (Mother) (2018; marble)

Fabio Viale brings his Pieta to Lampedusa, turned toward Libya, to send a message of welcome

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