Passato e Presente

Elisabetta Benassi on the occasion of the highly-wanted celebrations of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopaedia founded by Giovanni Treccani, in collaboration with Fondazione Gramsci, presents a one-day exhibition of the artist, entitled Past and Present. Treccani, always close to the figure of the thinker and politician from Sardinia, wanted to remember him in the halls of Palazzo Mattei of Paganica, a 90-year-old roman seat of the Institute led by Massimo Bray. "The exhibition," tells curator Jacopo Ceni, "takes place in three recently renovated rooms that will be presented totally empty. The spectator will be invited to walk through the corridor - like in a church nave - that connects them all in semi-darkness, as in a laic procession, looking in perspective of the wall that closes the path where Benassi's work is located, the only illuminated element " . This is the book Past and Present, the final chapter of the Quaderni da Prigioni, that the artist pierces with a wrought iron nail to stop it on the wall (but also implicitly evoking the Christological passion that Gramsci has faced in his opposition to Fascism).