2012 – Brandelli D’Italia – Spazio Price Waterhouse & Coopers – Milano (Italy)

December 2012. Few months have passed from the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy in the time of the most serious identity crisis of its history. The unitary form of the country has never seemed so hypocritical as in recent years in which old and new parochialism revive ancient controversy. In a Europe now based on homogeneous economic areas and no longer on older models of nation-states the division seems likely. The fragile unitary tissue reveals the shreds badly sewn which the country was divided into before the unification. United Italy, was for centuries the moralisticrhetoric dream of writers and poets, was the project of ambition of the House of Savoy. Thirty years after the completion of Unity, Italy was already shaken by separatist temptations, both North and South, and the topics under discussion were the same as today: the different cultural references, a wide gap in the levels of education, a contradictory consciousness of nationalism, the patronage system, organized crime, welfarism. The theme of SHREDS OF ITALY presents a gallery of subjects that represent quintessential Italy of that period, portraits of politicians and writers, musicians and heads of state, presented on notes or as superstars at an Oscar ceremony actually using a “pointillist” technique, by breaking down and rebuilding their portraits with shreds of discolored tissue. The metaphorical meaning is clear and wants to be a romantic and ironic quotation of a forgotten resurgence in the customs and intentions, in a country that still denies itself.