Molti is an installation created by Italian artist and photographer Antonio Biasiucci showcasing the connection between ancient rituals and contemporary dramas with a narrative flow eager to define the concrete shapes of faces and bodies, matter and flesh, vitality and epiphanies. The Sacred, the multitude and sacrifice underpin the aesthetic and poetic foundation of the work, unveiled to the public for the first time in the subterranean area of the Baths of Caracalla, in an exhibition curated by Ludovico Pratesi.
Molti is a work capable of evoking strong cathartic, emotional feelings in onlookers; an installation which harks back to the past to induce a careful and deep reflection on the tragic events taking place in imperial Rome, where hundreds of slaves from all over the empire worked underground while the patricians spent their days going from steam rooms to baths.
The installation consists of a multitude of men and women, an expanse of portraits, of soft profiles with closed eyes, a scene best visualised in dim lighting to observe these faces resurfacing briefly from the darkness of history.
Displayed for the first time in 2009 at the Barock exhibition, hosted by the Museo Madre di Napoli and in 2015 at the Centro Arti Visive Pescheria di Pesaro, the installation was realized in the Museo Universitario di Antropologia Partenopeo, where Biasiucci photographed a repertoire of casts of faces belonging to different African tribes made by anthropologist Lidio Cipriani in the 1930s. The title refers to the faces emerging from photographic darkness, a metaphor for the human condition, capable of influence not through individuality but collectively, in a multitude of differences.