The phrase “fare una scenata” or “to make a scene” commonly designates a public display of emotion, often involving exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, screaming, and possibly even violence against objects or people. In any case, there is no scene made without an audience. The idea of this book, and the group exhibition it documents, is to take the cliché seriously and explore its layers of meaning as a means to understand the relationship between artistic process and its aftermath in space, through object or image, and audience reaction.

Curated by Frieze editor Jörg Heiser, “Fare una scenata” was the first group show at Fondazione Morra Greco in Naples. It featured the work of nine international artists - Pierre Bismuth, Christoph Dettmeier, Haris Epaminonda, Henrik Hakånsson, Mustafa Kunt & Özlem Günyol, Marko Lulic, Aleksandra Mir, and Lisa Anne Auerbach - whose contributions appear here as color photographs accompanied by descriptions written in English and Italian. With an essay, also in English and Italian, by Jan Verwoert.