Galleria Fumagalli pays homage to contemporary art master Jannis Kounellis presenting the screening of the play Io by Etel Adnan held at the Piccolo Teatro Strehler, Milan on 23-24-25 May, 2022. On that occasion an iconic work by the artist was exhibited upon the wishes of director Theodoros Terzopoulos, great friend of Kounellis.
«Io is a performance presented in a small space, yet full of energy – the Scatola Magica; a place that looks like a chapel for pray and self-concentration» Theodoros Terzopoulos explained.
Dedicated to Jannis Kounellis’ memory, the play manifests as a candle of memory that, when lit, illuminates human being’s pain and persecutions that afflict them, giving the viewer a deeply intimate and moving experience. The monologue is about the silent grief of emigration, escape, displacement of a woman who is, at the same time, a contemporary creature and a character from mythology – persecuted and punished by Hera because of her jealousy of Zeus. The suffering is embodied in a demon that torments the protagonist in her deepest, like an invisible and invincible enemy, a monster to which everyone could give the shape of a personal discomfort.

Io gradually accepts the trauma, she changes and mutates, and in this acknowledgment, she manages to find a profound meaning in life. Thus, the liberating and cathartic ending meets Jannis Kounellis’ poetics which, like the Greek tragedy, seems to offer a possible way to sublimate individual anxieties and sufferings.
The selected work by Jannis Kounellis (the diptych “Untitled”, 2009) enhances the message of the play: the coats compressed by iron sheets serve as symbols of the human condition and specifically, they are indissolubly linked to the words of suffering and oppression of the protagonist Io, played by Aglaia Pappas.
To complete the scene, there is a tank on the floor – which was also present during the performance in the theatre. Filled with ashes and combustion remains from the Greek woods devastated by fires, it reaffirms the strong connection with Greece – the native country of the artists involved, as well as the myth itself.
Jannis Kounellis’ relationship with theatre began in 1968 at the Teatro Stabile in Turin with director Carlo Quartucci for the play I Testimoni by Tadeusz Rózewicz, for which he created a scene made of coal bags. Through these elements he could recreate on the stage – but also in his installations – a humanistic, poetic and revealing reality.

For the present occasion, Galleria Fumagalli and Theodoros Terzopoulos meet again, after their first collaboration at the Piccolo Teatro, Milan in 2015. Back then, Terzopoulos and Kounellis wanted to pay homage to one of the most significant authors of German theatre, Heiner Müller, staging the play Die Hamletmaschine (1977) in a scene by Kounellis consisting of furniture and domestic objects (wardrobes, bedside tables, coat hangers, bowls, glasses filled with grappa) and goldfish. Even in that case, the video of the play was re-presented at the gallery together with the installation, showing once again Kounellis’ strong bond with theatre.

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