Michele Zaza (1948, Molfetta) was a much talked-about Italian artist of the 1970s and 1980s. Three rooms on the first floor showcased some twenty works lent to MAMCO by Geneva’s Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, spanning his oeuvre to date. Zaza’s work is exclusively photographic. It adds a metaphysical dimension to the methods used in the Body art typical of his era. He presents his parents, often with painted faces, and in later works, his wife and daughter, accompanied by the occasional accessory—bread, cotton wool, a clock, a plate, a lightbulb. He frequently photographs his own body, “the way it is not,” exploring the notions of the archetype and the individual. His search is philosophical, while at the same time visual and aesthetic. For the artist, his quest shows that “only art can replace our inner nature with appearances.”

• Exhibition organized by the Print Room of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva