I.N.R.I. — BETTINA RHEIMS

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curated by Enrico Stefanelli

How should Jesus be represented today? How can his life, his actions, and his teaching be communicated through modern means, in the word we know, so that they transmit a sense of immediacy? In other words, paradoxically, how can they be attributed with that sense of timelessness conveyed in the verse of Gospel: “I am with you always; yes, to the end of the world”?

We have based our work on a close rereading of the texts, drawing on original sources while seeking to combine history and legend, as though both belonged to that hazy time frame known as the present and as though discovering them for the first time. In so doing we have merely followed the example of past artists who unhesitatingly transported episodes of the holy story into their own century, blithely borrowing the suburbs of Florence as a backdrop.

(from a text by Serge Bramly and Bettina Rheims)