ROME – After the success in 2021 of the Women In Comics exhibition, from 26 August to 2 October 2022 Palazzo Merulana returns to pay homage to the Ninth Art, its strength and incisiveness, with Conscious heart – Pier Paolo Pasolini told in the Comics, an extraordinary anthology that, through the language of comics, traces the life and works of the great Italian poet, screenwriter, actor, director, writer, painter, novelist and playwright, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth.
The exhibition, curated by Stefano Piccoli, produced by ARF! Festival, in collaboration with Coopculture, with the support of Lazio Region, ABC Project, ATCL, The Enchanted Citycollects more than 80 works by some of the most prestigious names in Italian comics, taken from 4 fundamental graphic novels that have told it under different interpretations: tender or raw, dreamlike or explicit, furious or spiritual, however always exciting.
These are original plates, cover illustrations, preparatory sketches, drawings and unpublished prints (granted exclusively) of the comic books Pasolini by Davide Toffolo, Pasolini 1964 by Giuseppe Palumbo, Pasolini’s secret diary by Elettra Stamboulis and Gianluca Costantini e The Pasolini crime by Gianluca Maconi.
The visitor experience will be enriched by some short stories by Massimo Giacon and Danilo Maramotti and a series of illustrations and portraits by Milo Manara, Andrea Serio, Francesco Ripoli, Leila Mazzocchi and Alice Iuri. The care of the texts of the whole exhibition will be entrusted to the pen of Elettra Stamboulis herself.
In addition to the exhibition project, there will be a review of weekly appointments – every Thursday afternoon at Palazzo Merulana – with a selection of the authors on display, who will meet the public in presence.
The graphic novels that inspire the exhibition
Pasolini by Davide Toffolo (Rizzoli Lizard, 2015) rediscovers the strength and sweetness of a timeless man and poet. An imaginary conversation between two artists that starts from a fantastic assumption: Pasolini is alive and has things to say. Many. Essential. But is it really him? Or a ghost, an actor, a mythomaniac? What is certain is that his conversation with Toffolo himself vibrates with that sense, that sharpness that made his spirit immortal. The cartoonist from Veneto looks for Pasolini among the pages of his books, in press clippings, in interviews and captures his essence: the poet’s anger, loneliness, fierce irreducibility resurface in these pages, in this intense portrait of Pasolini’s grace. by one of the most multifaceted authors in the panorama of Italian comics. In addition to the tables taken from the book, Toffolo will also exhibit several original drawings made “live” during the concerts of the famous rock band of which he is frontman and voice – the Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti – and a short story published in March 2022 on n. 3 of the monthly Linus directed by Igort, entirely dedicated to Pasolini.
In Pasolini 1964 by Giuseppe Palumbo, the poet instead questions his time in a close combat with himself: «What is the Truth? What is Culture? Who is the other? How to transform your life? And if his crisis were also our crisis? ». Pasolini 1964 is a graphic essay between comics, photography and collage that reconstructs the thought of the director, writer and poet Pasolini, at the crucial junction of 1964, the year in which he directs The Gospel According to Matthew and writes Prophecy, making it contemporary to our time, more alive that never.
Pasolini’s secret diary (Becco Giallo, 2015), by Elettra Stamboulis to the texts and Gianluca Costantini to the drawings, it is a secret in the sense of mystical, it is a false and authentic together: imagined working on the private letters, interviews, films and writings of the author , is a sentimental recording of Pier Paolo Pasolini before becoming Pasolini, that is the most discussed intellectual of the Italian twentieth century. Pasolini was a child and lived his youth intensely. And, when he became the most uncomfortable intellectual in Italy, he was able to preserve a profound pedagogical attention: the eyes of the Master, capable of keeping a child’s gaze, are the narrator of this book. From the act of his conception to the death of his partisan brother, Pasolini’s generous voice offers us a new coming-of-age novel: what does it mean to grow up, get lost, question oneself about one’s origins, desire and fear, in a geography of sequences that – speaking of him – question each of us. “The most important thing Pasolini could have given to his contemporaries would have been his diary,” they wrote after his death. Playing on this fantastic hypothesis, Stamboulis and Costantini write an imaginary autobiography, but at the same time based on all available reality data.
Over thirty years after his murder, with The Pasolini Crime (Becco Giallo, 2011) Gianluca Maconi reconstructs the last hours of the poet’s life, his aggression, the first investigations that immediately highlight the contradictions of the story by Pino Pelosi, considered by the Italian justice system to be Pasolini’s only murderer. The result is a human and vivid portrait of the great intellectual, a glimpse into his most intimate thoughts, the awareness of his discomfort and, perhaps, of his tragic end: “Thoughts and feelings, emotions and tensions are mysteriously transmigrated, beyond the news and the tragic chronicle, guiding the author’s hand and words
of this drawn story ”, writes Furio Colombo in the preface of the book.
Palazzo Merulana, Elena and Claudio Cerasi Foundation and CoopCulture
from 26 August to 2 October 2022
CONSCIOUS HEART
Pier Paolo Pasolini told in the Comics
On display more than 80 works by prestigious names in Italian comics,
drawn from 4 fundamental graphic novels
produced by ARF! Festival in collaboration with CoopCulture
with the support of the Lazio Region, the ABC Project, ATCL, The Enchanted City
Merulana Palace
Via Merulana 121, Rome
How to visit the exhibition
Wednesday to Sunday
from 12 to 20 (last admission at 19)
Full € 10.00 Reduced € 8.00 (Young people under 26, adults over 65, active teachers, Cartax2 holders, Lazio Youth Card holders) Free (children under 7, one teacher for every 10 students, one chaperone every 10 people, disabled person with companion, Palazzo Merulana Pass and Palazzo Merulana Young Pass holders, ICOM members, tourist guides with license, Freedom Card holders)
ONLINE reservations or at the ticket office in Via Merulana 121 on opening days and times.