Imperfect Binding. A Homage to Francesco Federico Cerruti

Overcoming the traumas of war, the destruction of works of art and the dispersion of entire communities, through the reactivation of objects, memories and intangible cultures, characterizes the work of Michael Rakowitz. As a tribute to the wealth of knowledge that Francesco Federico Cerruti brought to Italy in the late 1950s thanks to the activity of his Turin Industrial Bindery (LIT), the artist had a book of prayers in Hebrew and Arab-Judaic written in Turin his collection, whose binding had been destroyed. Printed in 1935 and belonged to the now dispersed Iraqi Jewish community, from which the artist himself comes, this book - because damaged - should traditionally be buried. Instead, the artist chooses to renew the cohesion between its pages, to "repair the words", thus giving life to a new work.