Metamorphic and unexpected, Roberto Cuoghi escapes easy definition by his very nature.

At the age of 25, his decision to assume the identity of his father and transform himself into an overweight 70- year-old attracted attention from the art world. For the seven years that followed, Cuoghi liberated himself from the inconvenience of dealing with his own youth, seeking out the ways and gestures of an older person. Despite his definition of the transformation as a private act, it is impossible not to interpret his action as a gesture that challenges contemporary culture’s conventions of youth, conformism and beauty. Today, some years after that long journey, Cuoghi has taken on a new identity – that of a more complete artist, substituting corporeal experiments with those of the mind and assuming metamorphosis as his disarming artistic ID card. Two years ago, I suggested that Cuoghi should hold a one-man show at Castello di Rivoli. I imagined it as the start of a new experiment, an adventure along a path not yet drawn out and without safety supports. And that’s how it was. “Šuillakku”, the exhibition showing at the Castello from May 7 to July 27, is a journey in time, an experience that promises physical and sensory emotions. Cuoghi has cast his mind back to the time of the ancient Assyrians, to the period between 612 and 609 BC, when their empire was about to be destroyed and their civilisation annihilated by oblivion destined to last for centuries. Breathing the warmth of a world that is no longer, imagining the thoughts of men and women who lived in another time, Cuoghi took on their superstitions. Inside the museum, the artist presents an imposing sound installation that has inspired the title of the exhibition. Structured as a ritual lamentation, the work is a hypothetical chantprayer to the gods recited by a group of Assyrians fleeing for their lives. Outside the Castello is a large monumental statue, showing Pazuzu, the demon that the ancients feared but that they called upon for strength to protect them from spirits that were even more evil. Instilled with an apotropaic function, the statue becomes like a large mirror, able to refl ect fears that are perhaps not so far away. Marcella Beccaria

07.05-27.07.2008
Šuillakku
Castello di Rivoli
Piazza Mafalda di Savoia
10098 Rivoli (Torino)
https://www.castellodirivoli.org