Best Regards

Best Regards is an installation based on a re-contextualised image: a photo of Pope John Paul II and Augusto Pinochet on the balcony of Palacio de la Moneda in Santiago de Chile, taken by Chilean photographer Marco Ugarte in 1987.

Two cut out ovals make it possible to use the work as a photographic background, where people can insert their own heads in place of those of the Pope and the Dictator.

About Best Regards

Best regards reproduces a photo taken by Marco Ugarte. This picture, and other similar photos taken by Ugarte and other photographers during the Pope’s visit were to make a powerful impression upon world public opinion at the time.

In my re-elaboration, generously approved by Ugarte himself, the picture is expanded to such dimensions as to be considered as ‘real’. In other words, the size of the two people portrayed is the same as that of a normal person. The picture has two oval holes cut into it, in place of the faces, and it is positioned vertically and in such a way that members of the public are easily able to insert their own faces into the holes and be photographed dressed in the clothes of one or other of the figures.

© Cristiano Berti

2024

In Best Regards il pubblico è invitato a inserire i volti negli ovali scavati in una gigantografia che riproduce una foto scattata 35 anni fa dal cileno Marco Ugarte, e a prendere il posto di Augusto Pinochet o Karol Woytila che salutano la folla dal balcone del palazzo della Moneda a Santiago del Cile.

Berti propone qui ai visitatori un gioco di ruolo che, con leggerezza e ironia (rintracciabile in buona dose anche nel titolo dell’opera), ricorda una delle pagine più controverse del papato di Giovanni Paolo II.

© Andrea Granata

excerpt from «Una realtà che dà la vertigine», Agenziaradicale.com, February 22, 2012