In continuity with the work of performative transcription on Gina Pane - Over Gina Pane_4 Sentimental Actions - presented in 2024 as part of the exhibition on Masterpieces from the private collections of Parma, Maria Federica Maestri and Francesco Pititto intend to carry out a three-year project inspired by the creative thought of some visual artists who have marked the artistic identity of Lenz Fondazione: Leonora Carrington (2025), Marisa Merz (2026_100 years since birth), Louise Bourgeois (2027).
Lenz Fondazione's projects are multi-year and thematic: the guide for the three-year period 2025-2027 is our ATLAS ON VIOLENCE, a dramatic investigation that crosses the literatures of the epic, the Iliad as an original mapping for a contemporary vision of violence and oppression, the artistic and political transcriptions of the philosophical writings of Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt, the new cartographies of post-humanist thought for the overcoming of cultural anthropocentrism, the performative translations of ecofeminist and antispecist readings of donna haraway.
In this Atlas of Lenz occupies a very significant place the project entitled OVER BELOVED FEMALE ARTISTS dedicated to some artists who have profoundly marked our poetics: Gina Pane (2024), Leonora Carrington (2025), Marisa Merz (2026), Louise Bourgeois (2027). Over Gina Pane_4 Azioni Sentimentali and Over Leonora Carrington_Distrazioni were created, in 2024 and 2025 respectively, in a site-specific form in the exhibition spaces of Palazzo del Governatore in Parma. In January 2026, the performance Over Gina Pane_4 Azioni Sentimentali was presented at the Brera Academy, invited as part of an important seminar project entitled EX CORPO conceived by teachers Pasquale Polidori and Maria Cristina Galli.
The work of contemporary retranscription of the life_works of these extraordinary artists is not intended to be in any way ‘animative’ or even a revisitation ‘homage’, but is explicit in the philosophical necessity of ’’being two’, is concrete in overcoming the pride of the self, of the one, of singularity and is exalted in disposing of the private property of the artistic gesture. Confluence of desire_signs not subject to the production of the object, but obedient only to the breath of nature and of many humanities.
In the third year of the project ‘Over Beloved Female Artists’, the acted, installed, and vocalized thought draws inspiration from the work of Marisa Merz, whose centenary this year marks.
Marisa Merz was an important exponent of the movement of poor, delicate and anti-monumental art. In our creative process, his research is considered/perceived as a world_text, a sensitive voice to be interrogated, an expressive gateway through which to access the unknown rooms of existence.
Teste is a symbolic transfiguration of the work of Marisa Merz, agíta and vocalized in the sonic tears and lacerations of Vivaldi's Stabat Mater, in a relationship not descriptive but symbiotic with her poetic corpus and with the works of Antonello da Messina. The Annunciation in Palermo, the Pietà in Venice and the three Crucifixions –in London, Bucharest, Antwerp– are nebulized in emotional physics and dispersed in chromatic and material traces.
The performative actions are conceptually linked by verbal filaments exfiltrated from the writings of the post-humanist philosopher Orsola Rignani, while the critical refractions of Luciana Rogozinski guide us in reading Marisa Merz's work and in building the creative enclosure.
The installation is energized by the biographical drives and performative transitions of Tiziana Cappella, C.L. Grugher, Lorenzo Marchi, Sandra Soncini and Carlotta Spaggiari.
__BLEND
Transforming space into an intimate landscape, navigating the numerous references, images, and expressions of Italian painting evoked by Marisa Merz –Antonello da Messina and Beato Angelico– to merge and form a performative work inhabited by primordial, organic, hybrid, and infantile femininities.
__ARISE
The cap_heads resurface as living matter and manifest in their essential beauty a human nature that survives the ongoing destruction.
Their fragile evidence presents itself as a form of resistance to the violence of wars.
__MULTIPLICATION
Seek the truth of the subject in the multiplication of its representations, of its bodily extensions. The multiple faces that Marisa Merz has modeled in wax, clay, or plaster, covered in pigments, gold leaf, and copper foil, or constantly drawn on every type of surface, possess a profound power, a hidden identity that can be refracted in the vibrant physiognomies of the performing subjects: a humanity tenderized despite the harshness and brutality of the present.
__TO LOOK
As Marisa Merz_wrote, it is 'with our eyes closed' that we see best, so we will try to explore her world by dematerializing our presence, eager to be together close and distant, silent and noisy, analytical and sentimental, in a tireless repetition of subject, form and gesture.
__TRANSlLITERATE
Biological transcripts of our existences in a warehouse_place, empty-full of harmless, abandoned, and functionless objects, where the tops_heads emerge, peaks of human hills destined by artistic genetics to express the complexity of existence and the enigma of death.
Bodies, memories, gestures to experience the meaning of life, a sense that implies the sensorium, the sentimental; in the work of performative transcription, the dilation of the sphere of the sensible, as evidence of contingent and precarious existence, is defined in an experience that appears as a time of anxious expectation of the unknown, of what is unknown, of that life that makes us tremble, as Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz writes in a short poem.
Dramatic reworking from the Diario Trans-temporale su una testa
Philosophical writing_Orsola Rignani
Performance composition, installation, costumes_Maria Federica Maestri
Critical suggestions_Luciana Rogozinski
Visual rifraction_Francesco Pititto
Performer_Tiziana Cappella, C.L. Grugher, Lorenzo Marchi, Carlotta Spaggiari, Sandra Soncini
Music_Antonio Vivaldi
Light design_Alice Scartapacchio
Production manager_Giulia Mangini
Curating Elena Sorbi
Organization Ilaria Stocchi
Graphic design, promotion Alessandro Conti
Communications, Press Office Giovanna Pavesi
Production Lenz Foundation
Duration_40 minutes
Special thanks to Merz Foundation
With the support of:
Ministry of Culture, Emilia-Romagna Region, Municipality of Parma
Premiere March 11, 2026
Caterina Barone
Lenz: l’immersione dello sguardo nel pensiero che si fa materia e azione
La performance assume le cadenze di un rito sullo sfondo sonoro dello Stabat Mater di Vivaldi, intonato da Lorenzo Marchi con una toccante voce controtenorile, e accompagnato dall’eco visiva del cromatismo della Vergine di Palermo di Antonello da Messina suggerito da quattro pigmenti, verde Russia, verde ossido, verde menta, verde autentico vegetale, ammucchiati dai performer sul pavimento.
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