In June 2023, in the main hall of the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts, Fabrizio Crisafulli and Melissa Lohman presented the installation-performance Transiti. The event offered an important opportunity to reflect on theatrical creation, the poetic dimension of theatre, and the memory of bodies and places.
A year later, the two artists worked together again, this time in a site of exceptional monumental significance: the burial chamber of the Pyramid of Cestius in Rome. There, from 20 to 22 September 2024, they presented the installation-performance Tramite, which they reflect on in the two texts that follow.
Transiti by Fabrizio Crisafulli and Melissa Lohman, Academy of Fine Arts, Carrara, 2022 (photo: Michele Ambrogi)
This exploration of the collaboration between Crisafulli and Lohman is organised into three sections. The first offers my account of the genesis and creative process of Transiti in Carrara, based on direct observation and on conversations with its creators. The second presents an interview drawn from those conversations. The third section brings together contributions by Fabrizio Crisafulli and Melissa Lohman themselves. It consists of a brief introduction to Tramite, followed by two complementary texts in which each artist reflects on this work and on how it both builds on and departs from their earlier collaboration in Carrara.
The Sky beneath the Main Hall: Crisafulli and Lohman’s Transiti at Carrara
by Mara Nerbano
Place as Text, Body as Matter: A Conversation with Fabrizio Crisafulli and Melissa Lohman
edited by Mara Nerbano
Inside the Pyramid in Rome
Introduction by Mara Nerbano
Texts by Fabrizio Crisafulli and Melissa Lohman