Cultura mummificata, 1972

Cultura mummificata (Mummified Culture), 1972, is made up of a series of books cast in aluminum, scattered freely on the floor. Like evidence of a remote past, the installation seems to convey the image of a mysteriously abandoned library. However it betrays more than one contradiction: the books are closed and “mute,” the words they should convey cannot be intuited and nor do their covers bear any information. Like a memory no longer accessible, the function of the books in the context of the transmission of knowledge is stopped and enclosed in a time that stands still. Casually overturned on the floor, the books seem like fragments of an unstable construction, an anti-monument that doesn’t celebrate anything except its own precariousness. [...]