tableaux vivants interview by LUCA LO PINTO portrait by ALESSANDRO CICORIA Luigi Ontani does not fit into the usual artistic categories. He expresses himself in a language all his own, as fascinating as it is elusive. He emerged in the 1960s, contemporaneously with Arte Povera and Conceptual Art, but chose a different and more personal path. His has been a journey of identity via the image, a voyage inspired by allegory, mythology, and Commedia dell’Arte. He uses his body in a thousand stories, in as many characters, inhabiting worlds between reality and fantasy. He has experimented with every conceivable form and material, from photography, performance, and tableaux vivants to painting, sculpture, and his well-known herms — Ermestetiche — and masks made of wood, papier-mâché, glass, and ceramic. In the current artistic and social climate, Ontani’s work appears particularly significant for its strenuous affirmation of the “elsewhere” as an ideal place…