Pompeii Commitment

Anri Sala investigated the news concerning findings from a large suburban villa in the Civita Giuliana area, in autumn 2020. The discovery concerns the skeletons of two victims of the second eruption of Vesuvius, the one that, in the early morning of 25 October, killed those who had survived the lava flow of the previous day. Based on the condition of the skeletons and the remains of their clothing, current studies suggest these people could be a young slave and his older master.
In addition to the recurrence of the number two – two victims stopped by the second pyroclastic flow – what struck Sala is that the bodies seem to touch, as the arm of one of the victims is close to the foot of the other. The dramatic circumstance, which literally unites the fates of these individuals even more, perhaps making what is different more similar, is part of the starting point from which the artist developed his project. Sanctioning forever a relationship which could undergo even further speculation, this proximity was also interpreted by Sala through drawings on paper. Traced in grey pencil, these works – and it is no coincidence that the artist made two – focus on two different moments, one immediately following the other. The first drawing was inspired by the casts seen from above and outlines the bodies lying on the ground. As also documented by one of the photographs from the excavations, the drawing shows the position of the young man with his legs extended and the one, more dishevelled, of the older man, who still seems about to contort. In the drawing, the artist insists on the point of contact, tracing with a single line the continuation of one body into the other. Not supported by documental evidence, the second drawing imagines a possible earlier moment, with one of the individuals unsteady on his legs and the other one already fallen yet still on his knees.
What brings together the two works on paper is Sala’s decision not to focus on the presumed identity of the two individuals, their different social roles or the possible tasks they were carrying out at the moment of their escape. A series of shadings that envelop parts of the figures can in fact be interpreted in relation to the last breath taken by the victims, thus displaying the most ineluctable aspect of their common humanity. These grey clouds, with red and blue dots, seem to have just exhaled from the bodies that produced them, suggesting the idea of a volume that, although feeble and invisible, nevertheless takes up space.

Anri Sala (1974, Tirana)

This text is an excerpt from the essay included as part of Anri Sala’s Digital Fellowship, written by Marcella Beccaria.