On painting
Interview in Paris on February 26 and 27, 2005
by Philippe Villaume and Pascal Bordenave
Translation from French to English by Jacquelyn White

(extract)

P. B.: Mauro, your painting dedicated to Hiroshima after the bombing is a work that is truly enormous, almost 30 meters in length. When did your start this painting?
M. B.: I started in 2001 and I finished it in 2003, with a few pauses in between. It's a work that I wrote a project for, it's not “only” a painting... I wanted to create a truly spectacular exhibition to pay homage to large-scale human tragedy.
“ Hiroshima ” is about thirty meters long and two and a half meters high. It's an enormous puzzle made up of 220 assembled parts. The project consisted of two distinct phases: “breaking up” and “reassembling”. In the first phase the exhibition of the work is followed by the sale of dissociated parts of the puzzle. The idea is that people can buy a part of the painting during the exhibition, therefore letting empty spaces appear in the work until it is progressively deleted. In this way I try to illustrate, or better, to make the mechanism of memory and oblivion tangible. The second part of the exhibition, which will take place in an unspecified number of years, will be dedicated to the reconstruction of the work.

P. B.: But it will have to be an incomplete reconstruction...
M. B.: Definitely incomplete but emblematic of memory that is erased. Some parts will probably be damaged, others lost forever... But this is part of the mechanism of collective memory. Each one is a depository for an individual experience, represented by a part of the painting, which for however small the abstract entity drawn from a figurative work, represents being part of the event. By reconstructing the work I intend to underline the need to feed memory and to assert that in the face of tragic events in history what counts above all is solidarity, the need to get people to agree in order to reach something constructive.
Therefore the project stages a metaphorical and ritualistic representation of man's destructive actions together with the possibility of reconstruction through memory.

P. B.: A new dimension can be seen in this work compared to your previous one: a stand is taken towards the history of humanity.
M. B.: That's right. I started working on “ Hiroshima ” at the time of the war in Afghanistan , but I didn't want to create a work directly tied to this country. I preferred working on a past tragedy that implicitly enabled me to express my disagreement with events taking place in the present. I was born in 1970 and I grew up in a country that taught us to reject war. But it seems things are different today. For this reason I felt the need to speak about it, to throw light on the present by showing the past and in a way, to exorcize it.

P. B.: What did working on such an unusually sized painting give you?
M. B.: For the first time in my career I worked on a painting that was too big to be seen in its entirety, so in a way I felt like the buyer who would have only seen a piece of the work in his house. Therefore I had to work on it by imagining the final result. I only saw it intact when it was first shown in Padua in 2003. Until that moment I had no idea what the outcome would have been. I was forced to not concentrate too much on detail and to always keep the whole of the work in mind.

P. B.: How did “ Hiroshima ” make your painting evolve?
M. B.: First of all, compared to the previous series of crucifixes, it is a more “optimistic” work, even if that seems like a paradox. Hiroshima is a very delicate subject, I was afraid of speaking about something I didn't know, since I hadn't experienced it. In my opinion it's important for an artist who has never experienced the tragedy of war to commemorate and at the same time to give a message of hope. I tried to make this clear through the choice of color; this element represents energy that circulates, life that counterbalances death. In reality, the choice of using many colors to paint the ruins is an idea I got from a passage of Se questo è un uomo by Primo Levi, which describes the sun setting on a concentration camp. The contrast between the beauty of the sky and the absolute squalor of Auschwitz perfectly underlines the total indifference of nature to human tragedies, contrary to an “expressionist” approach, which consists of representing the participation of nature, an approach I wanted to avoid.

Project Hiroshima
Mauro Bordin

Subject
A monumental painted work of the Hiroshima landscape following the first atomic explosion on the morning of 6 August 1945.

Technical Implementation
The painting, 2.5m in height by approximately 30m in width, is of oil on paper. The work comprises over 200 assembled fragments, measuring 50cm x 65cm and perfectly integrated into the whole. The completed work represents a unitary body whose single elements cannot be fully appreciated on their own.

Exhibition
The ideal location for exhibiting this project is the city of Hiroshima , Japan .
The project is divided into two distinct periods, Decomposition and Recomposition.
The first period (Decomposition) is further divided into two phases. The painting shall initially be exhibited in a venue large enough to accommodate the entire work. The size of this space should however be adapted to exhibit the work so that the spectator feels him/herself a part of the landscape. To this end, the painting might well extend over several walls (5m/20m/5m or 10m/10m/10m, etc.).
The second phase is the moment of decomposition, a gradual fragmentation leaving a series of voids which conspire to erase the composition. A fixed date shall thus mark the beginning of the second phase (one week following the beginning of the exhibition, for example), at which the painting shall start to be sold, piece by piece, each at the same pre-determined price. Purchasers choose the section(s) which appeal to them, which are then removed from the ensemble.
In the eventuality of all 200 sheets being sold before the end of the exhibition, the wall shall remain bare until the end of the exhibition.
The second exhibition period (Recomposition) shall take place on the day of the subsequent commemoration of the Hiroshima bombing (at most one year after the initial exhibition). Purchasers are invited to return their fragment(s) to the place of exhibition in the spirit of remembrance.

Around the exhibition
The painting shall be accompanied by a publication reproducing it in its entirety, also possibly containing a series of eyewitness accounts of the tragedy.
The creation of a website has also been envisaged, offering purchasers the opportunity to register their purchase in order to produce a living record of the work.
The entire project shall also be captured on video, relating the different stages of creation, exhibition and sale. In particular, the sale shall be filmed by a fixed camera recording the progressive Decomposition of the painting. The same procedure shall document its Recomposition. The parallel between Paris and Hiroshima shall be the focus of particular attention, notably Paris as place of conception and Hiroshima , of total destruction, as testified to in various archives.

Concept and Completion
This painting is above all a monument to memory itself, a reflection upon our collective memory, our perception of history. The project involves the metaphoric and ritual representation of humankind's destructive action as well as its capacity for reconciliation and reconstruction.
Hiroshima : total and instantaneous destruction, the ultimate, explosive manifestation of humankind's murderous power. A single second of History whose witnesses were also its victims and which changed irrevocably the destiny of humanity. The monumental dimensions of the work are the expression of the event's importance to human memory. But the two hundred or so composite elements, each incomplete without the others, are also illustrative of the dissipation of this same memory, shared by thousands of eyes, each pair of which reflect a direct or indirect perception of the monstrosity itself.
Thereafter, the necessary oblivion betrays neither indifference nor an incapacity to remember but is rather a testament to life itself. Oblivion as the emotive and psychological reaction to trauma. Survival implies forgetting insofar as rendering daily life livable. It is this concept which the Decomposition and dispersal of the work seeks to commemorate.
Anniversaries allow suffering emerge from the shadows, bestowing on it the right of recognition. The work is recomposed in its new, natural state, the holes which might appear in it (due to lost or damaged fragments, purchasers incommunicado) reflective of the fragility of our increasingly tenuous memory. The Recomposition responds to a need for the maintenance of memory, the need to guard against the progressive disappearance of witnesses and memories cancelling the tragedy from the collective consciousness.
The purchase of parts of the work by visitors is thus expressive of their participation in and sense of belonging to the event. A significant portion of the acquisition price shall be donated to War Victims funds, making of visitor participation more than just a theoretical exercise.

Paris, January 20 th 2002