Musca Depicta

Opening: April 5, 2024, 6 p.m.; Exhibition until: June 30, 2024 Labirinto della Masone in Fontanellato near Parma, Italy

In spring 2024, the Masone Labyrinth presents MUSCA DEPICTA: There’s a Fly on the Painting, a large and curious new exhibition that traces the appearance of flies in visual art from the school of Giotto to the present day.

A swarm of these small insects will take over the exhibition spaces of the Labyrinth on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Franco Maria Ricci publication Musca depicta, featuring an illuminating essay by André Chastel who was the first to examine the artistic incarnation of these pesky dyptera in European painting from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.

The aim of the exhibition is thus to substantially expand upon the arguments set out in the 1984 book, offering a multifaceted view of an insect that has always been considered an intrusive annoyance, and whose representation has, over time, revealed conflicting backstories and curious associations.

Featured work: "Portrait on the Fly" ©2015, Laurent Mignonneau & Christa Sommerer

The interactive installation consists of a monitor that shows a swarm of a few thousand flies. When a person positions himself in front of the monitor, the insects builds up the contour of the person. They begin to arrange and rearrange themselves continuously, thereby creating a recognizable likeness of the individual..

Posing in front of the monitor attracts the flies. Within seconds they invade the face, but even the slightest movement of the head or of parts of the face drives them off. The portraits are thus in constant flux, they construct and deconstruct. Portrait on the Fly is a commentary on our love for making pictures of ourselves (Selfie-Culture), it has to do with change, transience and impermanence. www.interface.ufg.ac.at/PortraitOnTheFly