In Procession from the womb, Galue turns his focus to the relationship between myths and traditions as a metaphor of human life. We are looking at the myth of Sisyphus and the Processions of Saints. Sisyphus is a tragic character that is punished by the Ancient Greece Gods after trying to escape death, to carry a rock through a hill and once he is about to reach the end of it, the rock will fall down and he will have to restart all over again for eternity. This walk carrying the rock that is to Galue “no different to carrying oneself with our notions of identity based on our cultural baggage” reminds the walk that saints, as tragic characters, do from their churches to someone’s house and then back to the church every year.

Using these ideas as a starting point he built a self-portrait made of cardboard and blue tape, two materials that are almost a signature of his povera and expressionist style; such a portrait features a smiling mouth and a baseball cap. For Galue “The baseball cap is part of his new American identity” and appears in his work in 2018 after he flees to the US. Dressed in black He walked from his home in the Logan Square neighborhood to Downtown Chicago carrying his sculptural self portrait just to let it fall down the stairs of the museum evoking the image of Sisyphus like a saint that cannot enter the church.

As a reminder to ourselves of the absurdity of life, we have the sculpture and the video recordings by Chicaribean Productions.