Acrolito

Venturelli addresses the theme of the monument in Acrolito. In contrast to the spiral column – once a monument celebrating Roman victories over the “barbarians” and, more broadly, affirming a people’s cultural and civil hegemony over the world – the artist proposes an anti-celebratory version that foregrounds its transformation into a tourist and consumerist attraction. The video shows a pole covered in Hawaiian shirts, a symbol of vulgar mass tourism, being stripped bare by violent gusts of wind, revealing the complete loss of authority of the once-celebratory object.

Piero Deggiovanni

Source: https://books.openedition.org/edizionikaplan/2235?lang=en