14.12.2018 - 31.03.2019
14.12.2018 - 31.03.2019
curated by Marta Papini
For its 30th anniversary, the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art presents a new entry in its collection: the monumental installation Triumph by Aleksandra Mir, shown for the first time in Italy.
Triumph, completed in 2009 and exhibited that same year at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, and in 2012 at the South London Gallery in London, is a spectacular installation by Aleksandra Mir composed of 2529 trophies collected by the artist across the span of a year in Sicily, in the city of Palermo and its vicinity.
The cups in the installation, dated from the 1940s onward, were gathered by means of an advertisement in Il Giornale di Sicilia in which the artist offered the symbolic sum of five euros for each trophy. The outcome of the initiative is an enormous, sparkling collection of keepsakes: a monument to youth and bygone glories, to the culture of amateur sport and the legacy of Italian popular history.
Sweat and effort, joy and deep sentiment, applause and celebration, reflected on the surface of these trophies, become faint, distant echoes in the exhibition, cumulatively conveyed by piles of inert metal. Triumph is a true memento mori, a visual document of the transient nature of success and the need of all human beings, at some point in their lives, to come to terms with the past, abandoning the illusion of eternal youth.
With the presentation of Triumph by Aleksandra Mir, Centro Pecci continues to exhibit large immersive and engaging installations, in a new focus on the output of important contemporary artists.