Christian Boltanski Project Touches Bologna’s Traumas, and His Own
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDOJULY 9, 2017
BOLOGNA, Italy — The artist Christian Boltanski sat on a bench in a Bologna museum facing one of
the 20 works he had allocated throughout this city and mused on a favorite theme: mortality.
Bruna Gambarelli, the Bologna council member overseeing culture, said she chose Mr. Boltanski as the focus for this year’s program because of his international stature
but also because he "is deeply rooted to our city, through a sincere, real relationship." (Mr. Eccher curated Mr. Boltanski’s first major Italian exhibition in Bologna 20 years ago.)
"And I am like that; the people of Bologna invited me." During the past five years, Bologna has honored artists in various
mediums who have had strong connections to the city, including John Cage, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Romeo Castellucci.
With Mr. Krawczyk’s score as a haunting background, the actors paused occasionally to whisper into a spectator’s ears: "Did you suffer much?," "Why did you die?," "Did you see the light?" Another installation in an abandoned 19th-century powder-keg
bunker in an outlying Bologna neighborhood involved a pile of clothing — representing the countless immigrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean on their perilous crossings from Africa — covered by dozens of gold-colored thermal blankets.
Recently he was invited back to create a citywide project in different mediums — a play, billboards, installations — including a public art "intervention" he will curate in a parking lot in September
and the exhibition at MAMbo that opened in late June.
Museum said that I don’t like so much to see my old works, because you can’t change it anymore,
