THE LAST SUPPER. REPETITIVE HABITS:
2019, Collective Exhibition
M.O.N.A ( Museum of New Media ), Verona
Curated by Sascho Tuorto
Abitudini repetitive is an installation that uses the representation of the Last Supper as an emblematic moment for the writing of history and cultural identity in different countries. The Last Supper is a story, a motif and a very important theme that can be considered as the last sharing between Jesus and his apostles, which leads to the death of Jesus for the betrayal of Judas. On the contrary, it could be read as the condemnation of an innocent man who is called a traitor, because of the possibility of reading the story and the images in different ways. The interpretations and contradictions analysed by B. Russel and J. L. Borges, for example, are central to the question: if Jesus foresees Judas’s betrayal, then Judas does not have free will and cannot avoid betraying Jesus. And if he cannot control this act, then the punishment received is not deserved, even if Judas is sent to hell for his betrayal. But if we look at his betrayal as a necessary step for the death of Jesus Christ and for the salvation of mankind, in this case Judas was punished for the salvation of mankind and suffers for the sins of mankind much more than Jesus, who was crucified and then redeemed in heaven. His role in penance is therefore important and fundamental.
In the light of these interpretations and this logical order, history changes completely, and all the consequences and beliefs that have developed subsequently fall with it. How, then, is it possible to define and determine things with such certainty when all culture and historical and other events are based on and translated by linguistic acts that can be interpreted according to different points of view and readings? Thus history is repeated and repeated, tried and tested through different interpretations, and this causes definitions and conclusions to become blurred, contradictory and poorly defined.
The Last Supper. Repetitive Habits, Alice Ahad, Installation, details, 2019 – ©Alice Ahad
The Last Supper is therefore a subject borrowed to open up a field of analysis on the concept of history, culture, identity and interpretation, to realise how the acts of definition can be vain but repetitive acts, necessary. The present still life is a metaphor for the vanity of this search for a vague and unattainable meaning or origin. The table can be translated as a symbol of a community gathering, but it is also the place where history and the guilty can be enshrined and defined. It is seen as an emblematic object, a court of judgment and power. The world of beliefs is being challenged. So what happens when even these long founding traditions of millennia-old cultures, which have given and give meaning to millions and millions of lives, turn out to be so contradictory? Language, traditions and habits are full of religious, cultural and uncertain traditions that prevent people from finding a stable and solid sense in this unstable context. Even before this scene, like the Last Supper, we are unable to define whether it is a sacred moment or the eternal condemnation of an innocent man, caused perhaps by a logical-linguistic error.
