Sacred and memento mori, Fausta Squatriti's exhibition in San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan

As part of Milano Art Week, a time when the city of Milan and culture will unite in a positive act of strength aimed at recovery and rebirth, an important project dedicated to Fausta Squatriti (Milan, 1941) has opened: it is the exhibition Opere al nero, open from September 14 to November 2 at theOssuary and Church of San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan. With this site-specific project, curated by Elisabetta Longari, Fausta Squatriti intends to make people reflect on the value of the sacred and memento mori by means of a relational short-circuit between place and contemporary art practice.

“Religion and art,” Longari writes in the catalog, “are both born to exorcise death, to counteract the existential chill, the dismayed thrill that seizes man at the idea of the transience of life. Yet it is precisely death that restores all meaning to life; thus, as Pasolini noted, it is the editing operations that give meaning to the film. Yet few dare to look at death. Fausta Squatriti’s works selected for this exhibition create a kind of commentary on death, remind us of its presence, invite us to look at its symbols directly in order to familiarize ourselves with it.”

The exhibition unfolds starting from the church where there is a large iron cross and a diptych, continues in the ossuary where the works, discreet guests, dialogue with the existing furnishings. In the charnel house chapel then a series of drawings made for this exhibition alternate. The title of the exhibition Opera al nero is not only a quotation, but is also the title of a cycle of works dedicated to Marguerite Yourcenar that Fausta Squatriti created in 2009. On display, in fact, is the work Oeuvre au noir: Alter Ego. The exhibition is accompanied by a special catalog published by Mainz with texts by Elisabetta Longari, Luca Bressan and Bertrand Levergeois.

In addition, within the 2021 edition of MiArt, Milan’s international modern and contemporary art fair scheduled from September 17 to 19, Galleria Bianconi, in collaboration with theFausta Squatriti Archive and supported by extensive original period documentation, will present a booth entirely dedicated to the artist in which Fausta Squatriti’s historic solo exhibition Sculptures et collages made in 1982 at Galerie Denise René in Paris will be reconstructed. This exhibition, titled Fausta Squatriti in the temple of exact art, again curated by Elisabetta Longari, is also accompanied by a catalog that analyzes Fausta Squatriti’s 1970s and 1980s production related to Black Sculptures and geometric works.

Image: Fausta Squatriti, Ecce Homo (1994). Courtesy Archivio Fausta Squatriti and Galleria Bianconi

Sacred and memento mori, Fausta Squatriti's exhibition in San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.