Gaddafi in Rome: Anatomy of a Friendship is part of a series of artworks stemming from the ongoing and long-term research Gaddafi in Rome, which began in 2017. It revolves around a highly mediatized event: the meeting between former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome, which took place in June 2009. The research is based on and engages with the media documentation of this event as well as an ‘iconic’ portrayal of the two leaders at Ciampino Airport. In this image, they exchange a handshake, surrounded by their security entourages. This reciprocal and cordial act is contrasted by a black and white image pinned to the Libyan head of state’s uniform, that is, a portrayal of Omar al Mukhtar, the leader of the anticolonial resistance against the Italian occupation. In chains, and surrounded by officers of the Italian occupying Army, he was executed few days later. Framing this project is an engagement with the relations between Italy and Libya since the Italian occupation (1911-1943) and during Gaddafi’s regime, specifically focusing on the more recent bilateral agreements that have been shaping the European Union’s migration policies in the Mediterranean.

Gaddafi in Rome: Anatomy of a Friendship builds on the previous three-channel video installation realised for the Maxxi Bvlgari Prize 2022, by the title Gaddafi in Rome: Notes for a Film. If this work presented Gaddafi’s visit to Rome through an exploration of its locations and actors, Anatomy of a Friendship focuses more specifically on the Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between Italy and Libya, both through a reflection on the event and on the bilateral relations between the two nations - the trajectory leading to the meeting and its legacies. The video is narrated through a first-person, self-reflexive voiceover, which engages with a series of documents and media recordings and news, while offering a series of reflections on the continuity of Italian colonialism. Next to the main projection screen, which features a red frame reminiscent of the image of Omar al-Mukhtar pinned to Gaddafi’s chest as a protest, a vertical TV monitor displays a timeline of the bilateral relations between Italy and Libya from 1998 to 2024.

Central to this work is an engagement with the notion of ‘dissection’ that provides tools, gestures, and a conceptual frame for the analysis of a media spectacle. This is also reflected and highlighted in the installation that plays on the notion of the anatomical theatre as a metaphor for critical analysis and its spectacularization. Bleachers-like seating and a large-scale ‘curtain’ provide direct references to the first permanent anatomical theatre built for teaching: the anatomical theatre of Padua. In addition, the space also includes two prints on plexiglas referring to the relation between Berlusconi and Gaddafi (and their ‘friendship’) while highlighting elements that directly comment on the contradictory nature of such allyship. That is, it puts an emphasis on the colonial script that drove the Treaty of Friendship.