Filippo Berta's Crucifix Performance at Thessaloniki Biennale

On October 15, 2017, Italian artist Filippo Berta (born 1977 in Treviglio) performed "A nostra immagine e somiglianza #1" at the Thessaloniki Biennale. Participants stood on tiptoes facing a wall, each hammering a nail at the highest reachable point. Crucifixes were then placed on each nail, forming an irregular line that demarcates a boundary between perfection (above) and imperfection (below). Berta described the work as a reflection on the collective need to elevate a fellow human to a dominant public condition, a process that has historically generated reassuring paternal or maternal iconographic images in political and religious contexts. He questions whether this attitude is a form of slavery from which we cannot escape, positing that the human being is the border between the order of the superhuman and the disorder of the body.