Ma è moralmente molto importante

Ma è moralmente molto importante is the title of Valerio Eliogabalo Torrisi’s long-durational performance, part of Co-Presence is a Passing Gesture, an exhibition season that considers public art as a relational condition in which the intermittent presence of passersby becomes an active element of the work.

 

The performance stages an incessant, unresolved waiting, as a figure of the incomplete recognition of homosexual people within contemporary socio-political systems. Kneeling like a groom left waiting, Torrisi embodies the non-action of someone who remains still, hoping for a change that never comes: a metaphor for the political and social paralysis that prevents such change from taking shape.

 

The installation evokes the imagery of a wedding celebration: fresh flowers and decorations create an environment that suggests the fulfillment of a couple’s union, while the performance exposes that fulfillment as inaccessible. The flowers introduce a temporal dimension, dictating the duration of the performance itself: no one – neither the artist nor those observing – will intervene to preserve them. Their slow decay speaks of hopes that endure for years but, without recognition, risk withering away, giving rise to frustration and resignation.

 

The title is taken from an interview with a homosexual couple featured in 1978 in L’amore in Italia, a television inquiry by Luigi Comencini broadcast on Rai. The two men described their marriage as lacking legal validity yet «morally very important»: making their union public, even without institutional legitimacy, was in itself a political act. Nearly fifty years later, Torrisi brings those words back to the surface to show how little of that long wait has truly reached fulfillment: what was then a symbolic gesture remains, in part, unresolved to this day.

 

For an updated overview of data on violence and discrimination in Italy, we suggest consulting omofobia.org.