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Incipit scriptum indefinibile sed omnino probatum a committente. An official and traditional presentation isn’t suitable for such a “social”, anti-academic and anti-institutional artist as Roque Fucci. The “character”, as said above, prefers a self-introduction: life and works paucis verbis. Maria Enrica Gemme I was born in Buenos Aires in the Villa Crespo neighbourhood, “across the river”, on 3rd January 1972, in the dark times of pre-dictatorship. My paternal grandparents were farmers from Basilicata, even if their Dantesque surname is typical of Tuscany. I have two childhood recollections of a different sign: the terror of the paramilitary forces at my house and the Sanremo songs sung or mimed by my grandmother. Hard reality and phantasy got mixed in my family: what was later to be referred to as “magic realism”. My first manufacts, which appalled my mother, were flower baskets, sirens and Medusa heads; then, to follow my artistic vein, in the middle of the euphoria of post-dictatorship, I entered the Manuel Belgrano College of Arts; and there my artistic and socio-political lives got intertwined for good: manifestos, papier maché figures along with the success marked by small awards in local exhibitions. Eventually, tired the frenzied and overexciting life of Buenos Aires, I, like Walden, in spite of not having read Thoreau, went to live in the Brazilian forests, where I built myself a house and fed myself on wild plants. Herbs were too sour, though, and in order to know the other part of that country I accepted the invitation at the luxury villa of a guy with a pompous name, - Edimir Ribeiro Cavalcante de Souza, son to a coffee tycoon, - where I took to designing questionable garden sculptures. Back in Buenos Aires I was again under the grip of Ishmael’s spleen in Moby Dick, so I set my mind on visiting Italy, although for a short stay. Having found a good occasion, I got to Turin, a grey and cold place not exactly in tune with my nature/culture. But there I met a very important person so I found an job, an unexpected one to me: I was to hold a pottery workshop for disabled teenagers and another one for the young people of the Turin detention home; through time I have learnt to appreciate a job that, for all its difficulties, enabled me to comprehend their souls through art. In about five years’ time I got my “mad” and “murderers” to create some true works of art. This is how this social and poor-art collection, which has now a visibility and praise
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