Giovanni Gaggia's 'Inventarium' Meditates on Ustica Massacre Memory

Artist Giovanni Gaggia (born 1977, Pergola) has published 'Inventarium' (Maretti, 2016), a hybrid catalogue exploring the emotional legacy of the Ustica massacre. On June 27, 1980, a civilian flight from Bologna to Palermo was torn apart over the Tyrrhenian Sea by an unidentified force, killing all 81 people aboard; no one has ever been convicted. Gaggia's book, edited by Serena Ribaudo, centers on images from his 2015 performance and installation 'Quello che doveva accadere' in Palermo, which addresses the memory of the victims. It also includes works from the 'Sanguinis Suavitas' series—blood-and-pencil drawings of raw hearts symbolizing proximity to others' suffering. The volume opens with an introduction by Daria Bonfietti, president of the Association of Victims of the Ustica Massacre, who calls Gaggia a 'citizen-artist,' and features a testimony from Fortuna Piricò vedova Davì, widow of a victim. Poems by Davide Quadrio, an art curator working between Italy and China, are interspersed. 'Inventarium' was presented at MAMbo in Bologna in September 2016 and at the Mole Vanvitelliana in Ancona in November 2016, with Luisa Davanzali—daughter of Aldo Davanzali, the Itavia airline owner who died after the tragedy—attending. The publication coincides with Gaggia's retrospective 'Sequens Lineam' at Galleria FabulaFineArt in Ferrara.