The work was conceived and realised for a small votive shrine found on the hill of San Licerio, a spontaneous architecture placed to protect agricultural work and harvests, a typical sign of popular devotion in the countryside. Marked by time and devoid of its original icon, in 2021 the Fondazione commissioned its reinterpretation to Manuele Cerutti.

The artist prepared its interior with lime paint and realised a 30-centimeter wide circular opening in its floor, a sort of small trapdoor, conceived to create a connection between the shrine and the ground it stands on. The oil painting on copper, which was realised for the niche, depicts six male characters as they execute a temporary choreography – constructing a pyramid formed by their bodies, arranged in precarious positions. The subjects are tangled in a playful challenge that is still underway: some appear as victors, others as defeated; some seem involved, others detached. In Affioramenti, the representation – as it often does in Manuele Cerutti’s practice – creates a tension between the history of art and contemporary human condition, by isolating the “actors” in a dimension within which space and time are suspended.