LONDON.- Known for his grand wall painting depicting Pope Francis as a superhero (Super Pope), Mauro Pallotta, also known, as Maupal is much more than a street artist. This has been highlighted in his most recent exhibitions, where he has been noted for painting with distinctive techniques on unusual surfaces. Painting with spray cans, Maupal usually uses steel wool as a veneer, on to which he gives life to his emotionally charged portraits.

Taking place at the renowned Le Dame Art Gallery in Notting Hill, the title of Maupal’s latest exhibition Since 1928 pays homage to the theme of life through the expressions and words of Liliana, an old Roman woman, born on the 4th of January 1928. Through this figure, he conveys his interest in life through the transcendence of time. With a series of looks, sometimes ironic and mocking, Liliana accompanies us as a new Virgil through the political and cultural changes that have characterized the last century and continue to determine our present.

The choice of the artworks titles: 1931, 1933 and 1941, initially seem generic and cold like numbers can be, however they actually serve as a documentation of Maupal’s attention to the passage of time and to the material persistence of memory in people’s lives.

Each of the images depicted by Maupal, recognise great figures of the past, such as Salvador Dali, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Bob Marley. Nevertheless, all the figures that the artist portrays, hold the face of Liliana. Hauntingly Maupal is letting viewers know that all these icons are all visibly alive due to this old woman’s voice and her powerful material presence.

An audio recording of Liliana will be part of the exhibition itself. In fact, it will be possible to hear Liliana, without teeth, without dentures and in her authentic roman dialect and at the exhibition, Maupal will tell us about the resonance of this woman’s unconventional life.

It is not a coincidence that the beginning of this visual and audio journey begins in 1931, with a portrait of Liliana, wearing Salvador Dalí’s distinctive moustaches on the anniversary of his famous painting The Persistence of Memory. Maupal’s artworks take inspiration from the concept of relativity and subjectivity of time. In fact, like Dali’s painting, for Maupal time cannot be measured in the same way for everyone, because time itself, influences and leave’s its marks on all of us in different ways.