CURA.

A peculiar taste for debris and accumulation marks Gelitin/Gelatin’s last show in Rome, sited at FOROF, an exhibition venue incorporating part of the former Basilica Ulpia at the Trajan Forum, dating from the imperial period. The artists look unafraid of taking over such a solemn location by turning it into an eerie cabinet of wonders, absurd yet unexpectedly classical. The show overwhelms the viewer with a profusion of artifacts selected from the artists’ former production or created specifically for the occasion, without clearly specifying which is which. Here, references to Roman material culture abound. Gelitin engage in a nearly philological manner by retracing a sense of proximity to the obscene, which was proper to the Ancient Romans. Small sculptures, plaster casts, and manipulated objects recall anatomical votives, phallic amulets, and the iconic cocci derived from the destruction of Roman amphorae. As highlighted by the curator Bartolomeo Pietromarchi in a conversation to be published in the exhibition catalog, Gelitin set up a sort of catacomb for their own, a profound spot of autobiographical memory.

Seen from the perspective of the artists’ strong relational background, the assorted excrement-shaped elements may also be read as drifted byproducts coming from a Romans’ latrina, where defecating in public became a one-of-a-kind moment of sociality. The prominent display of feces here appears to serve an apotropaic function, enabling a reversal of the conventional perspective on human waste. As the obscene is shown, the artists suggest, it suddenly becomes innocuous. I guess this also applies to the structures of violence, power, and abuse that Gelitin have been addressing throughout their practice, attempting to unmask and defuse them through ironical intrusions. The Roman project makes here no exception: dynamics of granting and reclaiming freedom, as well as opacities in the distribution of power, are at its core from its very conception, which was inspired by the practice of manumissio — the act of freeing slaves that occurred precisely in the Basilica Ulpia.