The Game of the Goose

On the occasion of the exhibition Open Museum Open City (MAXXI, Autumn 2014), MACRO and MAXXI jointly selected Cherimus to develop their work in a Roman institution. The work displayed by Cherimus at MACRO is the evolution of the performance Il Gioco dell’Oca di Marco Colombaioni, first presented at MAXXI and inspired by the work Il Gioco dell’Oca originally created by artist Marco Colombaioni (1983, Milano – 2011, Ravenna) in Valledoria (Sardinia) in 2009. This was a large outdoor painting in which spectators could enter in order to take part in the game. Cherimus has given the work a performative dimension, opening its doors to a fantastic world inhabited by animals, which have been realized in collaboration with local institutions, such as tailor’s workshops, art schools and SPRAR centres – Sistema di protezione per richiedenti asilo e rifugiati (System for the protection of refuges and asylum-seekers). The idea was to use the game as a forum for debates and as a tool for enhancing social cohesiveness. During its residency at MACRO, Cherimus has invited many artists to collaborate to the project, among which Simone Berti (who has realized some surreal videos in which animals come to life to conquer the city) and Carlo Spiga (who has collected and re-elaborated the recordings made during the workshops with sounds coming from African and South-American countries). The other artists involved in the project were: Alessandra Casadei, Leonardo Chiappini, Derek Maria Francesco Di Fabio, Cleo Fariselli, Edna Gee, Isa Griese, Valeria Frisolone, Michele Gabriele, Alice Mandelli, Marco Pezzotta, Matteo Rubbi, Emiliana Sabiu. The performance Gioco dell’Oca di Marco Colombaioni was commissioned by MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo in collaboration with MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma, as part of the programme “Artisti in residenza”.