It was at the summer edition of ARCO, that long-awaited, masked ARCO of 2021, when Miguel Ángel confronted me with the piece "I Mostri" by Alán Carrasco. Three small black-and-white photographs, with an irregular white stripe crossing through them, containing thousands of small bodies in formation.
What was that? What did it represent? I wasn't able to identify it, but something inside me told me that I recognized it. Suddenly, I felt a jolt, a shock. The past, the present, and the future overlapped in a timeless space, in a void of here and now. It was a stadium full of thousands of black shirts perfectly lined up, facing a specific point. Were they looking at me?
Could that jolt be the "punctum" (prick, wound) that Roland Barthes described in his multifaceted book "Camera Lucida"? Barthes defines it as that element of an image that hurts us, that touches us personally and forces us to stop and reflect (pensive photography, subversive photography). The "punctum" is not limited to the visual elements of the photograph but is an invocation to the viewer to perceive the unsaid, the hidden within the image. It is an essential tool for understanding how we interact with photography and, by extension, with art. Through the “punctum,” art becomes a force of resistance, a means to challenge power and cultivate a way of thinking that does not conform to the status quo.
The three photographs, in fact, were a triple 270º panoramic shot of the inauguration of the Genoa football field that Benito Mussolini oversaw in 1926. Those thousands of small white spots adored their Duce and represented a firm will to support his totalitarian project, which began four years earlier in Italy.
On a second look, I noticed an engraved text. The letters were spiked on the fragile glass; they were rough and could be touched. Miguel Ángel explained to me that the phrase was by Antonio Gramsci and read: 'Il vecchio mondo sta morendo. Quello nuovo tarda a comparire. E in questo chiaroscuro nascono i mostri.' (The old world is dying. The new one takes time to appear. And in that chiaroscuro, monsters emerge). A new jolt ran through me. The work has not only redefined an old image but also contains a message, a reflection.
Gramsci was an Italian intellectual, philosopher, Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, and journalist who wrote this reflection in his "Prison Notebooks" (1929-1935). In them, he conceives of the "monsters" as the product of a society marked by decadence and corruption, where the dominant ideology seeks to delegitimize the struggle for justice, equality, and freedom.
Art, in its various manifestations and languages, has historically been a reflection of the political, social, and cultural tensions of its time. Beyond being a simple aesthetic representation, art becomes a vehicle for questioning, criticizing, and reconfiguring power structures.
"I Mostri" by Alán Carrasco is not only an image about fascism but a reflection on the monsters that continue to haunt us. The work invites us, as spectators and citizens, to question our relationship with: politics, the social sphere, and art. It is a wake-up call to the dangers of forgetfulness and inaction during our chiaroscuros.
PS. Needless to say, I left the fair with the piece, literally, under my arm.
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Antonio Toca (1961) is an Industrial Engineer, Art Historian and art collector (AT Colección).
