Rome, a major exhibition on Pasolini at MAXXI on the centenary of his birth

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini(Bologna, March 5, 1922 - Rome, Nov. 2, 1975), MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo di Roma and Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica are celebrating the figure of the poet with a major exhibition project coordinated and shared in their respective museum venues. The choice of the title, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Everything is Holy, is inspired by the phrase uttered by the wise man Chiron in the film Medea (1969), and evokes the mysterious sacredness of the world of the underclass, archaic and religious, in sharp conflict with the heroes of a rational, secular and bourgeois world. Each museum has declined the title-theme by delving into it according to different paths: the poetic body at Palaexpo, the visionary body at Palazzo Barberini and the political body at MAXXI, where the voices of 19 contemporary artists evoke the political commitment of Pasolini, a prophet to whom many generations have looked to in order to draw the guidelines of their research.

The exhibition Pier Paolo Pasolini, Everything is Holy. The Body Politic, at MAXXI from Nov. 16, 2022 to March 12, 2023, curated by Hou Hanru, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Giulia Ferracci, sponsor Intesa Sanpaolo, is conceived as a close dialogue between the works of 19 artists both contemporary with Pasolini(Mino Maccari, Fabio Mauri, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali) and of more recent, for whom Pasolini still constitutes an indispensable reference(Elisabetta Benassi, Marzia Migliora, Sammy Baloji, Claire Fontaine, Francesco Vezzoli). On display are more than 200 documents including original articles and typescripts, audio and video interviews, his personal diary, photographs including the extraordinary and intense portraits of Dino Pedriali, all dating from his last period of activity.

In particular, the focus is on 1975, the year in which Pasolini was particularly active: lectures, interviews, television appearances, articles in the most important and authoritative newspapers and magazines of the time (including Il Corriere della Sera, Il Mondo, Epoca, La Stampa Tuttolibri, the periodicals Tempo and Gente and many others) all characterized by his usual polemical charge and provocative accusation. His interventions touch on burning and topical issues such as abortion, homosexuality, abuses of power, and the destruction of Italian tradition and identity as an effect of the unchallenged assertion of mass culture.

Also in the exhibition itinerary is the voice of his cousin and philologist Graziella Chiarcossi, who in eight audio points accompanies the visitor in a profound and authentic reading of the poet.

Comments Giovanna Melandri, President Fondazione MAXXI: "Pasolini continues to be an inexhaustible magnet. Digging into his thought, his literary and cinematographic works, the inspirations, interrogations and illuminations are endless, and this exhibition is a living testimony of that. At MAXXI, the exhibition project conceived more than a year ago with Cesare Pietroiusti, then President of Palaexpo, Flaminia Gennari Santori and ’our’ Hou Hanru, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Giulia Ferracci comes to an end. And it is very nice to pay homage to the great intellectual on the centenary of his birth with a shared project, the result of generous inter-institutional collaboration. I thank the entire scientific committee, which for over a year has worked passionately on the three exhibitions.

At MAXXI, the works of 19 contemporary artists evoke Pasolini’s political commitment. In a continuous parallel between past and present, they analyze the social and political transformations that only Pasolini’s mind, heart and eyes could fully grasp.We need to draw from the depths of the past. Today more than ever."

With Elisabetta Benassi’s work Alfa Romeo GT veloce (1975 -2007), which evokes the vehicle driven by Pasolini on the night he was killed, we immediately enter the heart of the exhibition: the light of the unfolded headlights dazzles and disorients the visitor, creating a space-time short-circuit: the car is intact, the headlights look ahead, like Pasolini’s thought that is alive and illuminates the future.

The exhortation to young people not to surrender to homologation, the subject of the poet’s pedagogical column in Il Mondo (some original copies of which are exhibited along with typescripts), is echoed in the young people photographed in Rome by Jorge Fuembuena Loscertales, who for this occasion presents a series of images from the Chavales del arroyo series inspired by Ragazzi di Vita.

Pasolini’s statements about the contemporary power system, sex as a metaphor for consumption and the commodification of bodies are echoed in Paul Chan’s work, Sade for Sade’s Sake, which transforms scenes from the film Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom into projected shadows. From the same film come the three Deco chandeliers hanging in the center of the exhibition space, created for the set design by Oscar winner Dante Ferretti, while scenes from the film were immortalized in photographs by Gideon Bachmann and Deborah Beer.

Between these two works, we find FOOTNOTES (2022) by Alvin Curran, a site-specific sound installation that evokes Pasolinian themes and passions. A soccer shoe and a lawn; a stuffed crow reminiscent of the film Uccellacci e uccellini; a barbed-wire chair that is a metaphor for the difficulty of the writer’s craft; and a piano that plays an unpredictable symphony on its own.

Fabio Mauri ’s installation Oscuramento (pictured) reflects on the degradation of the system of power and politics: 16 large-format photographs depicting politicians of the time obscure the glass windows, while 29 wax statues in military uniforms seated around a table with the figure of Mussolini in the center recreate the last session of the Grand Council of Fascism on July 24, 1943, which sanctioned the end of the regime.

In Pier Paolo Pasolini 2009Marzia Migliora uses steel letters to recompose the phrase “Maybe it is me who is wrong. But I still say we are all in danger,” uttered by Pasolini in his last interview with Furio Colombo on November 1, 1975 for Tuttolibri of La Stampa, which is extraordinarily relevant today.

The myth of Medea as an allegory of cynical contemporary society devoid of values is found in Nalini Malani’s Despoiled Shore: 12 prints populated by life-size mythological figures, where the story of Medea and Jason becomes a metaphor for the exploitation of natural resources in Asia.

Claire Fontaine’s installations Untitled (Lament) and Untitled (Sermon to the Birds) draw inspiration from two frescoes by Giotto and speak of the irreconcilable split between authentic values and consumer civilization, while They Hate Us for Our Freedom, a famous phrase uttered by George W. Bush after the attack on the Twin Towers, here becomes writing on the wall made of hundreds of matches ready to catch fire, evoking tension and danger.

The subjects of Yan Pei Ming ’s large canvases are also featured in some of Pasolini’s works, such as St. Matthew and St. Paul.

Pasolini repeatedly denounces the homogenization of culture and the death of beauty in the aftermath of the economic boom, also fueled by “stupid compulsory schooling, and delinquent television.”

Themes present in Francesco Vezzoli’s video work Comizi di non amore, a reality show in which four celebrities are invited to choose among various suitors.

The rise of bourgeois culture, traceable in the crowd of men all dressed alike, is also present in Giulio Paolini’s sketches and collages made for the set design of Teorema, a 1999 ballet for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino inspired by Pasolini’s novel and film of the same name. Also inspired by Teorema is Ming Wong ’s installation I must go. Tomorrow, which depicts the constant tension between repressed human passions and false identities imposed by society.

Also in this section are 21 watercolors by Mino Maccari, who drew the poster for Accattone for Pasolini: sketches depicting scenes of everyday life, surreal and grotesque atmospheres.

The lost or barely surviving world is the pre-industrialized one that lives on in the exhibition in the two films by Pino Pascali, shot in 1965 for the Cirio commercial, where the artist interprets the dance of Pazzariello and the gestures of Pulcinella.

The world of soccer becomes a metaphor and an example of life in Pasolini’s writings and in Huang Yong Ping’s environmental installation A Football Match of June 14th 2002, inspired by an event that really happened on June 14, 2002, when an asteroid grazed the earth . And again soccer returns in Paolo Ferrari’s shots of Pasolini with the ball, intent on playing a game, free, happy in the practice of his favorite activity.

In the video work Our songs were ready for all the wars to come by Noor Abed we find choreographed scenes based on Palestinian folk tales passed down orally and sung by women. Folk songs thus become tools of everyday resistance against homogenization.

Sammy Baloji ’s multimedia installation Tales of the Copper Cross Garden: Episode 1 recounts the process of transforming a population from rural to industrial, and how colonial enterprise exploited Congolese people and resources.

Closing the exhibition is a message of vital resistance: the work by Aziz Hazara, Bow Echo. It stars a child from Kabul, who tries to climb a boulder to call the herd back with his whistle. The sandstorm pushes him to the ground but he gets back up. After all, even Pasolini’s last poem in Friulian, Un saluto e un augurio, with which Bow Eco is ideally associated, is an act of life, like the one the poet leaves to those who read his will: “(...)I will walk lightly, going forward, choosing forever life, youth.”

For all information, you can visit MAXXI’s official website.

Ph. credit: Musacchio Ianniello Pasquialini Fucilla

Rome, a major exhibition on Pasolini at MAXXI on the centenary of his birth

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