Columna mutātio - Itineraria Picta Installation

Columna mutãtio - Itineraria Picta I.1 Exposed at Mercati di Traiano - Museo dei Fori Imperiali, 2013/3014, Rome. Drawing in graphite on Fabriano paper ( 300 g ). Dimensions: length 30 m and height 0.90 m. Video of the exhibition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtZIiTCABM The paper installations drawn with graphite are inspired by itineraria picta, volumina and triumphal paintings, reference sources of Apollodoro of Damasco, designer of Trajan’s Column and of the column’s frieze. Interpretations of the marble freggio of the Trajan Column and the Roman world, using metamorphosis and mutation as a method of my research. The “connoted” papyri, light since they are “emptied of substance”, infinite since they’re fragments without beginning and without ending, suggest the compositional pretext of the rolled up tape, wandering horizontally and vertically in the Great Hall. The contamination of the picture of the frieze’s representation through the interpretation of her artistic research, customized by metamorphosis and by mutation, takes place through pictures joined in a flowing course, continuum of evocations in an almost ritual progression. The digital prints and the bas-relief pictures become power points in informal relationship with the original column, supposedly coloured. The new “itineraria picta” create selective courses on the various themes represented: the harmony of the human body, roman and dacian physiognomies, their clothes, the recognizable sarmati-roxolani, Trajan, Decebalus, the bridge over the Danube, the military clothing, the war marchines, the god Istro-Danube, the military camps, the landscape, the animals, as the cow, the pig, the horse, the bull; the god Jupiter, the night, the river, the trumpets, the eagle, the cities, the games, the Dacian women, the kids, the military doctors, the battle scenes, the wheat harvest, the names of the Dacian localities and the use of essential elements as fire and water. The Trajan’s column represents the first visual tale of history, born to celebrate the conquest of Dacia by the Romans and she has become through time it has become the symbol of an inseparable historical link between Italy and Romania in the new Europe. This change of meaning acquired a strong multicultural value, as a source of inspiration for the “new history” created on the research of a common denominator of past and present values. Design project of Architect Pietro Bagli Pennacchiotti Mercati di Traiano - Museo dei Fori Imperiali, Rome, 2013/2014