L'amicizia (Friendship)

The Eternity project stems from an idea by Maurizio Cattelan, developed in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara on the occasion of his appointment as Honorary Professor. During the official ceremony, the artist involved the students in the production of works focusing on the theme of death, prompting reflection on the rituals and symbolic codes of the end of life. The result was a collection of funerary artefacts — gravestones, tomb plaques, tombstones and printed obituaries — bearing the names of artists from the past and present, with their dates of birth and death, sometimes hypothesised for those still alive, brought together in a single performance installation set up in the gardens of the Carrara Academy.

This is the context for L'amicizia (Friendship), a work that explores one of the central themes of Cattelan's poetics: death as a tool for questioning the meaning of life, expressed through the language of black humour. The work consists of a tombstone dedicated to Maurizio Cattelan himself, flanked by a dog — also present in the post-edited photo — which, in a deliberately irreverent gesture, repeatedly defecates on the ground where the artist lies. The epitaph reinforces the ironic tone of the work: “The greatest pain was leaving my dear and faithful friend”. L'amicizia, which recalls Cattelan's famous taxidermy works, was selected from among the twenty works awarded by Maurizio Cattelan himself.