Giganti-Giants

To bring contemporary art to the ancient heart of Rome beginning a continuous and evocative dialogue between the present and the past is like to confirm its constant evolution, both historic and artistic. Indeed, the Fori Imperiali continue to speak to the entire world, prevailing from the heights of their ruins. In this unique location, five important contemporary artists have confronted the forums via the
universal idiom of art: Joseph Kosuth has “occupied” the Foro Traiano with sentences out of Vitruvio's De Architectura, inscribing them on fragments of glass; Domenico Bianchi has strewn white ceramic handkerchiefs within the remains of the Tempio di Marte Ultore in the Foro di Augusto; Maurizio Mochetti has installed the red Sfera laser inside the subterranean Cloaca (open to the public for the first time); Marina Abramovic´ has built seven long staircases in the Foro di Cesare, each with steel knives instead of rungs, accompanied by a video that features the artist in “imperial” pose upon a white horse, while the Yugoslavian national anthem plays in the background; and Michelangelo Pistoletto has hidden a shoulder fragment of a colossus in a 1930s cellar in the Foro. In this way contemporary artists
demonstrate that history.