In the heart of Piazza Florio, dedicated to the famous family of entrepreneurs, a meeting place for all ages and social classes, stands Tanam’s open-air home. From there, he listens to and observes us, applying “good manners” to aesthetics and behavior. As he ties his tie, he faces the threat of eviction, guarding our waste and caring for the square, attempting to be part of the society surrounding his daily life. Tanam’s gestures and gaze, where only a flowerbed divides private from public, reveal the paradox of social norms.

Ciprì and Maresco are fierce critics of post-modern society. They bear witness to the colonization of the imagination attributable in part to the omnipresence of mass communications and the globalization of neo-capitalist values. Their works, scatological in the literal but especially in the metaphorical and etiological sense, denounce social institutions and practices thought to be at the root of injustice, inequality and criminality.