Gianni Motti

Born in 1958 in Italy, he lives and works in Geneva. 

Usurper of History

Gianni Motti leads in Geneva, Switzerland, in his own words, "an exemplary life". Is this a joke? Certainly, when you know the culture of disruption that is so dear to this art energetic who represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 2005. His latest solo exhibition, "Swap", presented by B.P.S. 22 in Charleroi in March 2012, explores the current contradictions between financial and political power, with finance, which has become the champion of governance, imposing itself more and more on the latter while weakening the decision-making centre of democratic regimes.

The piece presented in Toulouse, The Victims of Guantanamo Bay, first shown at the Salle de bains in Lyon in 2007, consists of a series of commemorative plaques dedicated to the prisoners of the American detention centre. Its form is borrowed from the monuments to the victims of 9/11, but the list of names, engraved in steel in alphabetical order, is that of the 759 people who had been or were still being held at Guantanamo in 2007. The United States had to publish the complete list of prisoners, following an appeal by the Associated Press, in the name of the American Freedom of Information Act. Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi, former French prisoners, were present at the opening.

According to Claudia Cargnel, his gallery owner in Paris, the works of Gianni Motti, a genius at appropriating and manipulating everyday events, "are like a series of interventions, often outside the art world, infiltrating reality and conveying its social and political protests. "Motti also sees himself as a "demiurge", claiming the appearance of certain natural phenomena such as the eclipses of the moon or sun, to which he invites the crowds, or the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, which he appropriates as a work of art. In politics, he has run for the presidency of the United States, usurped a seat at the UN and presented several exhibitions in tribute to the prisoners of Guantanamo, the first of which was held at the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris on 11 September 2004 and was entitled "Guantanamo Initiative".

This work by the duo Christophe Büchel and Gianni Motti, created in close collaboration with Michel Ritter, the late director of the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris, refers to the ancient history of Guantanamo. This Cuban bay is occupied by the United States by virtue of a convention established in 1903 but regularly denounced by Cuba, whose government, since 1959, no longer cashes the cheques sent to it annually by the American Treasury for the rental of the bay. "In 1903," says the Büchel and Motti manifesto, "the US government forcibly obtained the signing of an agreement that gave the United States an absolute right to interfere in Cuban affairs. The US has thus obtained a permanent concession for Guantanamo Bay and pays a symbolic annual rent for the 117 square kilometres, which today amounts to US$ 4085.

Since the cheques have not been cashed, Büchel and Motti believe that the Vienna Convention on Treaties has expired. Hence their campaign for the return of Guantanamo to Cuba. They then took a very practical approach to the negotiating table, initiating discussions with Cuba through advisers, with the aim of legally renting Guantanamo Bay and turning it into a cultural base. "It's up to us to get the squatters out! "says Motti, referring to the American "tenant".

Gianni Motti tirelessly pursues his commitments: "I don't want to make 'artistic' art," he says, "I want to create art while forgetting about art, I want to make work that speaks for itself and has meaning. "The meaning, in this case, of History in progress.