Vomitare sulla Grecia

In the 1970s the work of Italian avant-garde artist Fabio Mauri took a determinedly militant turn, encouraging the viewer to re-evaluate European politics. In 1972 he made the first of his “Political Multiples”, Vomitare sulla Grecia [Vomiting Over Greece], which consists of 500 identical aeroplane sick bags set on a shelf, each containing a unique slab of resin incorporating rice and other materials in imitation of vomit. Above the shelf, a photograph showing the artist as a child aboard a plane brings out the nature of the work as a humorous but stinging denunciation of the Regime of the Colonels that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974: the artist imagining himself vomiting over Piraeus.