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Futuro Antico. Interview with Flavio Favelli
24 ott 2023
Ludovico Pratesi
He feeds on the past, is not interested in tomorrow but in the creative power of memory: artist Flavio Favelli shares his ghosts in Futuro Antico.
Who are your inspirational references in art?
I think everything traces back to my past. I take the familial and social situations and dynamics I experienced as a kind of model, an always valid and unwavering reference: psychological traits, power, recognition. In 1997, I went to Libya in solidarity with the Libyan people against the embargo. In Tripoli, at the bar of a grand hotel, a large wall of orange sodas served as the backdrop. I met an Italian businessman who suddenly told me, 'Do you know what drives the world? Two things: money and pussy.' I wonder if he was right. The world is as old as the world itself, just like the two things that have always accompanied us: art and war. And I have lived with these all my life, within my family. For me, born to a mother who loved art — or believed she loved it — because she thought it could free her from the war within our family, it was quite a story, not without its upheavals. In Italy, the past never really passes; ghosts linger, and dreams are wishes. Deep down, I try to recreate my story, but in doing so, I create a new one. Fate placed me in a failed bourgeois family, between Florence and Bologna, where, during the '70s and '80s, an unfinished game was played. My mother would cook while reciting Goethe in German, curse Franco Basaglia for releasing my father, a poet, and take me on tours of museums around the world. My grandfather, a strikingly handsome man and anti-communist, who returned alive from the Russian campaign, loved filling the house with antiques and art. To vomit, you must first overindulge.
What is the project that represents you the most? Can you tell us about its genesis?
The project that represents me the most is the one I haven't done yet, but that exists as a concept. Years ago, I wrote to Edith Gabrielli, the superintendent of Palazzo Venezia, but she replied that my idea didn't fit into the museum's program. However, Palazzo Venezia is always empty, there are no exhibitions, and there isn't a clear program. My project involved exhibiting scratched mirrors in the large halls of the Concistoro and Sala Regia, mirrors I've been working on for a long time, so they would reflect the surroundings in a somewhat unconventional way. Additionally, I wanted to replace the three curtains in the Sala del Mappamondo with fabric from other found curtains I've collected, to mark and somehow renew a space that seems unsolvable, a space that, I believe, can only be addressed by art. These three halls represent power across a long, unfinished historical phase.
I also wrote to Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, raising the issue and advocating for my cause, asking him if it's possible to evoke the country's past through art. But he never responded.
How important is the Genius Loci in your work?
Florence and Bologna are close worlds, less than 40 minutes by train, but they are worlds apart. Oscillating between these two complex identities and using them as models is a privilege, but then I chose to live in the Apennines, to get away. It's a bit like politics, I would say: avoiding the left, mocking the right. I wouldn’t call it 'work,' as that word is too entangled with terms like duty, virtue, and salary. The Italian artist is already born with too many burdens on his shoulders, and with these, he triggers a great challenge. The Genius Loci is a complex matter—the past presses down on you and sweeps you away.
How important is the past for imagining and building the future? Do you believe the future can have an ancient heart?
I would say there is no past and no future; there are only things, images, presences, memories, fears, and hopes that move us like puppets. I don't even speak of people because they, too, are things, images, presences, memories, fears, and hopes. There's only the present, often elusive, and it's never enough, but it's also sweet and moving.
What advice would you give to a young person wanting to follow your path?
I don't have children precisely to avoid speaking to young people, and I deliberately don't teach. I simply don't feel like it—it's all very heavy.
In an era defined by post-truth, does the concept of the sacred still hold importance and power?
It’s a term that drags along too much baggage, so perhaps it’s best left alone; besides, we worked so hard to desacralize everything! In Italy, it's a concept too intertwined with the Church and Catholicism. Still, these are personal, private matters. It's a word best avoided, too dangerous to handle, too entangled in certain issues. Recently, some people have tried to talk about sacred art again, and the Church also seems eager to collaborate. But art is sacred on its own, and if anyone wants to separate art from sacred art, they should go work for the Church, where, it’s worth remembering, religious images are meant for rituals. There’s always some critic or artist with a guilty conscience who stirs things up, but it’s best to leave it alone. As Mario Perniola said, it’s better that art stays in Pandora’s box.
How do you imagine the future? Can you give us three ideas that, in your opinion, will guide the coming years?
The future doesn’t concern me—I know nothing about it, and I think I just don’t think about it, except for honoring commitments I’ve made a few months ahead. Not having children is already a pretty clear answer. In a few months, I’ll be moving into my own house project in Montepastore, in the Bolognese Apennines. I take, belatedly, what technology gives me—Whatsapp or photovoltaic panels, for example—but I’m also building a small lake to store water. They say a great drought is coming, but I also plan to float a wrecked raft on it. Maybe I’ve been too influenced by a tale my demonic grandmother always told me—a nasty story about a little old woman with a tiny bit of ricotta. She thought she’d make a fortune with that ricotta, but while waving to passersby from the window of her new future home, the only ricotta she had fell into the mud. In 2022, global military spending increased by 3.7% compared to the previous year. Let’s see what happens in the years to come.