Museion invites you to its guided tours via Zoom of “Genealogia di Damnatio Memoriae”.

- At 6pm in Italian with the mediator Francesca Fattinger: https://bit.ly/3ejJE3e (access code: 753057)

- At 6.30pm in German with the mediator Greta Mentzel: https://bit.ly/2N0bZ3g  (access code: 697216)

After the appointments focused on Matt Mullican’s installation at Museion Passage, the visits in the first weeks of March are dedicated to Genealogia di Damnatio Memoriae by the artists Goldschmied & Chiari. For over a decade this work has been an integral part of the view of Museion from the Talvera river, but not everyone knows it is a work of art and part of the Museion collection. Genealogia di Damnatio Memoriae is, in fact, a very special magnolia tree, as the artists Goldschmied & Chiari carved into its trunk the dates and details of the massacres that shook Italy between 1965 and 1987.

The work is part of a cycle that focuses on the reinterpretation of certain recent events in Italy’s political history. The title refers to an Ancient Roman custom, the Damnatio Memoriae, that involved punishing a condemned person by destroying all records and memories of them. For this installation, the two artists chose a large magnolia tree. The references to the bloody massacres that took place in Italy are carved into the trunk of the tree in a potentially endless sequence of events and relations that recall the State’s responsibility in the so-called “strategy of tension” and Italy’s role in the Cold War.

The tree was positioned in front of the Museion’s façade on the grass that runs down to the river Talvera in 2009. Another example of the work is located at the Rivoli Castle in Turin. In the past, Museion has presented other works by the artists Goldschmied & Chiari. In addition to their participation in the “Group Therapy” exhibition in 2006 with the artwork “Confine Immaginato” (Imagined Border), there was the famous installation “Dove andiamo a ballare questa sera?” (Where are we going dancing tonight?), exhibited in 2015 at the Museion Studio House, and currently revived at the Galleria Poggiali in Milan. Lastly, like the artist Matt Mullican, Goldschmied & Chiari also created a work for the fence around the construction site of the new Museion in 2006, entitled Ninfee #16.