Your curatorial approach is considered holistic. Did you adopt the same method in this case too?

Judith Clark: "I usually work this way because I curate and design the exhibition. Here, however, the scenography is by Fabio Cherstich, but the attitude with which I considered space and curatorship remained the same. The meeting with Cherstich led to interesting conversations.

The collaboration between us - he is a director and scenographer and I am a curator and exhibition designer - was very fertile.

The result is a very theatrical exhibition, enriched by the choice to use Fiorucci's voice: he speaks in the first person, thanks to a series of unpublished recordings that he had made in the last years of his life to write his biography. So, let's say that biography and theatricality are the characteristics of this "talking" exhibition".

The narrative aspect is predominant in this exposition. Why?

Judith Clark: "We try to be part of the individual Fiorucci, a person who worked in a generative and collaborative way. It is very difficult to do this work on the objects he produced because almost always there is a graphic designer, an architect, a creative person who designs them.

Fiorucci's role was that of a collaborator - motivator and his voice underlines this very nature of his.

The expression "Passa parola" that he uses very often indicates his method, capable of generating atmospheres, fashions and I was interested in this aspect being powerfully reflected in the exhibition.

Which is also didactic: there are hundreds of drawings and works in Progress, but for me it was important not to lose him, the man. Fiorucci is a person who unites the most unexpected voices of Italian design such as Branzi, De Lucchi, Lupi and other protagonists already present at the design museum in the Triennale".

And then there is also a dreamlike aspect to his work…

Judith Clark: "It pervades the entire exhibition, together with the idea of ​​elsewhere, that is, of getting out of everything that is sad and gray. Fiorucci does it in all areas and involving all the senses. We are in the Years of Lead, in New York there is an AIDS epidemic and worries invade everyone's space. He then proposes an insistent joy through escape and refoundation".

What are the innovative elements of this exhibition?

Judith Clark: "I think there are many, starting with the effort we made to make generative a brand and a series of already very well-known stores. Fabio Cherstich and I tried to identify an evocative grammar that would unite the different levels of the exhibition, the visual one, the didactic one based on the pieces of the archive and the more strictly biographical one.

The scenography plays a lot on this, for example the public can take the receiver of a telephone from the wall and listen to Fiorucci's voice, but they can also approach the tables to examine a graphic design test.

Cherstich's work develops with his own personal idiom, which establishes a dialogue with my curation. The result is an exhibition that aims to highlight the complexity, often little known, of Elio Fiorucci's work".

A few years ago, you curated an exhibition on the vernacular that has gone down in history. Can we talk about the vernacular in Fiorucci's production?

Judith Clark: "In a certain sense, it is too obvious a relationship to be true. He does not deal with it, and neither do we. If we mean vulgar in its etymological meaning, then the discussion becomes deeper and we realize that Fiorucci's production is a project of inclusion.

I would struggle to use this term because it is obvious, but his style completely resists it. Vulgar, that is for everyone, without the pejorative meaning that we normally give to this word, applied to Fiorucci is an opportunity".