Il mare colore del sangue

Abstract

In their artwork "Calendoola: SURUS", visual artists Simone Trabucchi and Simone Bertuzzi AKA Invernomuto, in their characteristically visionary language combine sensory experiences and political urgency, offering a reflection on a potentially dystopian society incapable of coming to terms with its own history of colonial, imperial, neocolonial, and global domination. In their 2018 installation at the MAXXI Musuem in Rome, men bleed, turtles lie on their backs, and elephants look on, wise and inexorable. Meanwhile the sea is burning and has turned blood-red. It is the blood of the sons who cross it from opposite sides of the Mediterranean, some succeeding, others succumbing to its abysses. It is the blood of the Black Mediterranean, a tongue of fire that acts as a hinge to the loop, ideally opening it and closing it, and that turns the screen into cloud, smoke, sky, sea, island, and archipelago. A space that is shared and boundless, and that in recent years has become an area of heated debate in European electoral campaigns.