“A museum is a grey zone – the “white cube” in a gallery and the “black box” in theater – in which behavioral conventions must be renegotiated.”

Exhibition moves in this direction, superimposing the two spaces, breathing life into both of them simultaneously. Theater in motion, literally.

From an original idea and curated by Gaia Morrione, Exhibition is a new performance piece by theatre company, Cuocolo/Bosetti. Created to be performed in museums, the work questions the nature of an art exhibition. The actress’ voice guides a group of twenty-five spectators wearing headsets through the museum spaces.

The performance – without altering existing spaces but rather embracing the sense of  permanence that characterizes them – creates a detournement in the museum. The result is the discovery inside a genuine location with rooms, paintings, lights and scents, of a hidden, introspective and intimate place where one can venture, get lost and find themselves again. Walking through a museum is always a means to create one’s own map, a psychogeography in which observation, knowledge and experience intertwine.

Through the flow of the performer’s words, a unique art gallery takes shape before us. Paintings and artists are connected by stumbling over memories. Muffled sounds, lights and scents are superimposed over the inner life of the protagonist, and the entire museum is reinterpreted and intensified by this interaction. If the artist is present, the works of art evoked are completely absent. They’re gone. What remains of them is a memory. The memory of the feeling they aroused and left in us.

Exhibition is an imaginary exhibition. It is never installed but rather made “almost invisible” through the performer’s words and movements. It is an oral exhibition crosscut with variations in olfactory landscapes.

It is a site-specific work that adapts to the space and context in which it is performed.