Fabio Viale Rolls Kitsch Marble Statues Down Carrara Quarry for Performance

Italian sculptor Fabio Viale (b. 1975, Cuneo) staged a performance titled Root'la—a phonetic and semantic blend of the English word 'root' and the Carrara dialect word 'rut'la' (to roll)—in the ravaneto (sloping waste area) of the Gioia Quarry Cooperative in Colonnata, Carrara. This site was deliberately chosen as the same quarry where Michelangelo sourced marble for his masterpieces, whose teaching remains Viale's guiding inspiration. During the performance, Viale pushed large-scale statues, previously purchased from local souvenir shops, down the slope, where they shattered or sustained damage. He then recovered the fragments and will install them in a major exhibition at Galleria Poggiali in Florence, recreating the entire quarry environment indoors. The exhibition, titled Acqua alta High tide, will occupy two venues: at Via Benedetta, a 15×6-meter room will replicate the ravaneto's slope as a marble cascade; at Via della Scala, a dozen stone monoliths replicating Venice's bricole (navigation poles) from Viale's installation at the 58th Venice Biennale will be shown, with traces of acqua alta (high water) symbolizing climate change. The show runs from February 22 to May 16, 2020.