Fabio Mauri

Manipolazione di cultura / Manipolation der Kultur, 1976, 11 photographic prints transferred to canvas, acrylic, 45 × 72 cm each, Associazione per l’Arte Fabio Mauri, Rome. One of Fabio Mauri’s most significant works on the theme of the ideological instrumentalization of language, Manipolazione di cultura originated as an artist’s book, published in 1976 by the publisher La Nuova Foglio. Mauri drew on the original lithographs to create a series of plates, which he used for exhibitions in the years thereafter. The results are large canvas-backed photographs with a tripartite structure: in the upper part is a documentary photograph of Nazi and fascist iconography, in the central zone a monochromatic black-painted band, and in the lower part a phrase describing the action depicted in the impersonal, alluding to the subject. The actions refer to the power of cultural “manipulation” that totalitarianism utilized as an instrument of conquest and to maintain power. With this and other works, Mauri exposes the “root of evil” hidden within the ideology and language that sustain it.

Fabio Mauri