Curatela scientifica di Mirella Serlorenzi
Terme di Caracalla 25 febbraio – 23 aprile 2023
in collaborazione con Reggio Parma Festival e Fondazione Teatro Due di Parma
“Lessico Animale. Mysterion.” is the title of the exhibition by Yuval Avital, curated by Cristiano Leone and with the scientific curation of director Mirella Serlorenzi, which will take place entirely in the underground areas of the Baths of Caracalla. Reflecting the artist’s multifaceted nature, it will include numerous mediums and artistic practices – performance, video art, photography, sound sculptures, paintings, and temporary site-specific material compositions – interwoven in a tight dialogue with the archaeological monument. The exhibition-journey unfolds in environments usually closed to the public, including the famous yet mysterious Mithraeum, an underground site dedicated to the worship of Mithras, a solar deity of eastern origin. Thus, for the first time in its history, the Mithraeum will become a venue for performance and contemporary creation.
The term “Mysterion” recalls the ancient mystery rites that, by stripping man of his daily attire and social identity, created a bridge between the conscious and unconscious, between animal and human, between reason and instinct. In “Lessico Animale. Mysterion,” the artist embarks on a journey into the unexplored depths of the deepest self, directly connected to the most emotional, instinctive, and animalistic sphere. Thus, gesture, voice, and body, lifted from their ordinary tasks and predetermined purposes, are free to express the submerged truth that dwells in every man.
In the space of the Mithraeum, followers of Mithras performed sacred rituals through the passage of seven stages represented by animals and archetypical symbols. The artist and curators see in this space of strong experiential value the possibility of a contemporary recovery of the rite – whose meaning seems now lost, overwhelmed by productive frenzy – and which on this occasion takes the form of an art rite. Not a historical reconstruction of the ancient mystery cults, but a reactivation of the spiritual power of the place that finds its culmination in performative actions that investigate and transform the human soul.
The Baths of Caracalla are thus reinstated in their original function and become the womb of the performance “Lessico Animale. Mysterion,” where vocalizations and movements of bodies transform into membranes capable of bringing forth depths. The performers, carefully chosen by Avital, exploring the most recondite and primordial side, transform into archetypical figures where the boundaries between human and animal are annihilated. “Lessico Animale” is a project born in 2022, produced by Teatro Due di Parma and presented in the exhibition “Lessico Animale. Prologo,” at Ape Museo di Parma, as part of the larger work “Il Bestiario della Terra,” conceived by Avital for the Reggio Parma Festival and enriched at the Baths of Caracalla with a second chapter, this time populated by the animals protagonists of Mithraic symbolism: the Bull, the Serpent, the Scorpion, the Lion, the Dog, and the Raven.
The transformation is conducted by Yuval Avital with the dynamic dramaturgy of Cristiano Leone, in a synergistic collaboration that has lasted since the first act. For “Mysterion,” Avital and Leone worked in isolation with the performers for a week so they could fully embody the complex actions written by the artist; curator Cristiano Leone guided the performers in understanding these, favoring an intimate and personal reading for a genuine unveiling of this dimension. In this new chapter, the role of director Mirella Serlorenzi is crucial; like a Virgil, she led Avital and Leone in discovering the Baths, not only their physical spaces but also their historical and ritual meanings.
“Lessico Animale. Mysterion” is a complex work that invades all areas of the Baths of Caracalla, starting from the performance that will take place in the Mithraeum and the undergrounds, as well as the exhibition of other works by the artist that revives in dialogue with the contemporary every corridor, room, or crevice of the historic space. Welcoming the visitor, three material compositions created by Avital, reassembling precious archaeological finds from the Caracalla site, to shape hybrid figures. As often happens in his practice, fantastic beings come to life from the study and revisitation of objet trouvé present in the exhibition venues and the storerooms of museums with which the artist engages in dialogue. Following, along the gallery, the 130-meter-long labyrinth painted by Avital where archetypical creatures, tied to the sphere of the unconscious and fears, emerge from the dark background, creating almost a pictorial transposition of the sculptural referents the visitor has left behind. Concluding the exhibition of Avital’s creatures that spectators will encounter, the Sirens (produced, together with the Labyrinth, on the occasion of “Il Bestiario della Terra”), icono-sound works with an iron structure, that resonate their song far from the sea, and placed in dialogue with the famous Reintegrated Apple by Michelangelo Pistoletto. Here the myth of the predatory siren is overturned: no longer a stereotype of monstrous femininity but free and ethereal, as the chorus of the white voices of the girls from Teatro Regio di Parma who give voice to the work.
Beyond the filmed restitution of the transformative process realized with the performers in the Mithraeum, the Baths of Caracalla also present the first chapter of “Lessico Animale,” realized in Parma, in the form of photography, video, stage material, and sound sculptures made from casts derived from the performers’ bodies, as an exhibition of contemporary archaeological finds layered on those of the past and ready to leave their trace for future inhabitants.
