Christian Boltanski Project Touches Bologna’s Traumas, and His Own<br />By ELISABETTA POVOLEDOJULY 9, 2017<br />BOLOGNA, Italy — The artist Christian Boltanski sat on a bench in a Bologna museum facing one of<br />the 20 works he had allocated throughout this city and mused on a favorite theme: mortality.<br />Bruna Gambarelli, the Bologna council member overseeing culture, said she chose Mr. Boltanski as the focus for this year’s program because of his international stature<br />but also because he "is deeply rooted to our city, through a sincere, real relationship." (Mr. Eccher curated Mr. Boltanski’s first major Italian exhibition in Bologna 20 years ago.)<br />"And I am like that; the people of Bologna invited me." During the past five years, Bologna has honored artists in various<br />mediums who have had strong connections to the city, including John Cage, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Romeo Castellucci.<br />With Mr. Krawczyk’s score as a haunting background, the actors paused occasionally to whisper into a spectator’s ears: "Did you suffer much?," "Why did you die?," "Did you see the light?" Another installation in an abandoned 19th-century powder-keg<br />bunker in an outlying Bologna neighborhood involved a pile of clothing — representing the countless immigrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean on their perilous crossings from Africa — covered by dozens of gold-colored thermal blankets.<br />Recently he was invited back to create a citywide project in different mediums — a play, billboards, installations — including a public art "intervention" he will curate in a parking lot in September<br />and the exhibition at MAMbo that opened in late June.<br />Museum said that I don’t like so much to see my old works, because you can’t change it anymore,
