Performance 10’

Teatro Marittimo di Villa Adriana, Tivoli

ph Ela Bialkowska, OKNOstudio

The action focuses on the area believed to have been dedicated by Adriano to his companion Antino, an area adjacent to one of the Villa's decision rooms and surrounded by a circular canal.

The audience is not allowed to cross the canal and watches the performance from the opposite bank. Taking into consideration the fact that the love story between Adriano and Antino was known to all, including Adriano's own wife, and respected enough to allow Adriano to build around the figure of his beloved a veritable cult, which from the assumption of Antino as a model of perfection and beauty also sees him enjoying a veneration equal to that reserved for the gods, and instinctively considering that it is often, too often, the case today that too many same-sex couples have to live their relationship in a hidden, concealed, undisclosed manner, the work materializes in an attempt to "conceal," precisely, the load-bearing architectural structures of the chosen area: the columns.

By deploying naked performer near the columns, he is "concealed" as well as the columns himself, using bubble wrap. At first glance, the audience will not notice any difference between the columns and the artist's body.

Ruben remains motionless, covered, helpless. Supporting structures of a social architecture within which his homosexual body must be invisible to most. Only at a close look his body reveals himself under a material that is usually used to preserve, to protect, but undoubtedly also to hide.

Hiding nature itself, too often not considered as such.