Le nostre ferite sono le ferite della storia | Ruben Montini 2023

Collica & Partners presents Ruben Montini’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, "Le nostre ferite sono le ferite della storia", on view from 18 May to 18 September. The title takes its cue from the words of Porpora Marcasciano, renowned activist, writer, artist, and former president of MIT (Movimento Identità Trans), addressed to the artist following his performance CARNE DA MACELLO, documentation of which will be presented in the exhibition. The phrase underscores the fact that every wound inflicted upon those who do not identify with or conform to a heteronormative existence is, ultimately, a wound inflicted upon humanity as a whole.
One of the leading figures of queer culture, Montini gives powerful expression to the emotional fragility and social precarity experienced by communities that remain marginalized and engaged in the ongoing struggle to attain a condition of so-called “normality.” Performance is his primary artistic medium, while photography, sculpture, and tapestry emerge as extensions and material consequences of his performative practice.
For the exhibition, Montini presents PECCATO DI DIO, a performance addressing the contested status and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people within Western and Catholic society. The artist’s physical and emotional condition is pushed to the point of exhaustion, culminating in defeat—not as a failure, however, but as an extreme testimony to consciousness, love, perseverance, and resistance. Ropes pulled by the audience trace a cross through the artist’s arms above a structure of women’s shoes: a symbol deeply embedded in Western culture that, gradually overcome by the tension of the ropes, collapses to the ground, renewing a cry that remains unheard. The action generates a field of contradictory emotions—love and hatred, fear and audacity, pride and humility—reaching the point at which, as philosopher Lorenzo Bernini observes in reference to Kant, an artistic act may “arouse disgust rather than condemnation.”
In Catania, the performance is accompanied by photographs, sculptures, and tapestries originating in earlier actions and addressing the theme of the family, particularly the relationship with the mother: a space in which social conventions and ignorance can produce rejection, suffering, and marginalization. The photographic works unfold as a cinematic sequence in which poetry and documentary reality intersect, preserving experiences that might otherwise be forgotten. The tapestry "Le mani di mia madre che non mi hanno detto addio" (2020) translates the anguish of the first lockdown into an intimate image of personal grief, while simultaneously evoking the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
In works such as "A Cozy Home for Me, My Future Husband and Our Lovely Kids" (2019) and "In niente di niente" (2019–2023), thread becomes both the material and metaphorical fabric of memory. Family and chosen forms of love emerge as conflicted and deeply painful subjects, marked by both failure and resilience, unfolding within a sumptuous yet precarious habitat—an apparently secure environment ultimately exposed as resting upon fragile foundations.