Event #36

Matteo Renzi wears white shirts. According to a version proven by reporters, he always has an extra white shirt in his suitcase. Starting from this detail, Marco Belpoliti tries to describe Renzi the man through the clothes he wears. A visual and anthropological study that harks back to his previous works on Berlusconi and Bossi, but also an intervention on the clothes worn by Italian politicians, from Alcide De Gasperi all the way down to Beppe Grillo. And what about the seven shirts? “Sudare sette camicie”, sweating seven shirts, this Italian expression means making a huge effort or undertaking. But the shirt is not just the item of clothing that became the symbol of the middle class and the bourgeoisie in general in the twentieth century; rather, it is the “object” that swaddles the well-born. To be born wearing a shirt, as the Italian saying goes, (meaning, to be born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth): to be lucky, according to a popular version, which, in Renzi’s case, accompanies his vocation for carrying out legendary feats, he being a latter-day, contemporary Hercules.