Desiderio Sanzi's Malebolge: Dante's Inferno in Umbrian Cisterns

Desiderio Sanzi (born 1978, Milan) presents 'Malebolge', a new cycle of paintings and performances curated by Lorenzo Rubini, held at the Cisterne romane in Amelia, Umbria. The exhibition transforms the Roman cisterns into a descent through Dante's Inferno, featuring nine cisterns where the collective CreaTuRe performed. Sanzi, dressed with goat horns and bare-chested, remained in a dark, muddy grotto as a primordial guardian. The title refers to the eighth circle of Hell reserved for the fraudulent, divided into ten concentric ditches. The palette is dominated by 'pietra di color ferrigno' (iron-colored stone) with accents of vermilion red and coral concretions forming a large installation. Paintings depict the lustful, gluttonous, wrathful, heretics, violent, avaricious, and prodigal. Notable imagery includes Cleopatra with a cascade of roses, women falling from the sky with swirling garments and burning book-meteors, and nude figures with Roman helmets fighting above a turtle skeleton. A large goat with twisted horns watches over the visitor where the altarpiece once stood. Sanzi has participated in the Venice and Havana Biennales, lived many years in Cuba, and made the film 'Ahora si Llego!' there.