LE ERINNI
Mattatoio “La Pelanda”
Piazza Orazio Giustiniani n. 4,
Rome, 2018
THE PROJECT
Le Erinni is the first step of a touring exhibition involving contemporary Italian artists in the presentation of 50 historical costumes coming from the Accademia Nazionale di Danza and of private works related with its tradition. The step in Rome, at the Macro Testaccio, is entrusted to Alfredo Pirri, who dedicates it to the Erinni, according to the tradition, from Aeschylus to Jean-Paul Sartre …
THE INSPIRATION
The installation, presented in the poster as a production, is inspired by the theatre play “The Flies” of 1943, written by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and staged in the same year in Paris, in full nazi occupation. The play is a creative rewriting of Aeschylus’ Choephoroi, and is set in an imaginary city overrun with flies, that torment its inhabitants like the Erinnis did in the original tragedy. The Erinnis are female figures who represent the feeling of remorse that oppresses those who are guilty of a crime to one of their close relatives (like does Orestes who, for revenge, kills his mother Clytemnestra together with her lover Aegystus, …. or, perhaps, like avant-garde always does with tradition). They are annoying, insistent figures, who oppress the characters of the tragedy with the memory of their faults tormenting their reason (or reasons of their act).
THE EXHIBITION
After one year and the exhibition at the MACRO Testaccio, the artist Alfredo Pirri goes back to the Mattatoio with a new project, expressly conceived for the anniversary of the foundation of the Accademia Nazionale di Danza (AND). In the exhibition, Alfredo Pirri shows a landscape of ruins that recalls a drama, already occured or still occuring, presented by fifty female costumes created in the course of the history of AND, selected for this occasion by the staff of the Accademia. They recall, in their arrangement, the hanged bodies that could be seen in the streets of European cities at the time Sartre wrote the text, but that can still be seen today in the sreets of the world. Besides, he presents fifty panels made with oil pastels over photographs of the costumes taken in the theatre of AND in Rome. These drawings, positioned at the level of a child’s eye, are exposed in the large theatre hall, before the second hall where the installation is, made with costumes, so anticipating its sight. These drawings animate the lifeless costumes, filling them with dramatic tension, hinting at bodies made of light and energy: an explosion of colours and Dionysian force. They will, in the future, compose the pages of an acoustic book on dancing, dedicated to children, with images and sounds coming out while turning the pages and creating a visual story.
To watch the video click here
PHOTOS: GINO DI PAOLO
SKETCHES
