Silence Cuts Deeper in Maurizio Cattelan’s Sussurro

Ever wonder what the banana-on-the-wall guy is plotting these days? Maurizio Cattelan—the artist who turned a duct-taped banana into a $120,000 cultural migraine—is back, and this time he’s whispering instead of shouting. His newest exhibition at Porto’s Serralves Villa feels quieter, stranger, almost conspiratorial—like he’s leaning in and daring you to hear something you didn’t know you were missing. Buckle up, here is Sussurro.

This isn’t spectacle for spectacle’s sake. In fact, Sussurro (Italian for “whisper”) trades in that for
something far more intimate: the subtle tension between silence and memory. Cattelan is drawn to
liminal spaces: childhood/adulthood, life/death, laughter/tears. He turns those in-between moments
into icons, setting them in “saynètes” that bring historical figures, friends, even his ancestors into
strange, quiet conversations.

You’ll spot eerily human figures–fragile, uncanny, uncomfortable. These aren’t sculptures, they’re
loaded memories we thought we’d buried, popping up when we least expect them. Cattelan’s still
playing the trickster, the jester—but the humor here cuts slower, deeper. It’s less about shock and
more about that long bruise fading beneath your skin.

Still—you won’t find solemnity here. Instead, expect dark humor that makes you grin, then makes
you check yourself for laughing. It’s a moment of recognition: we’ve trained ourselves to consume
tragedy like a meme. Cattelan forces that recognition, poking at our numbness without preaching.
He hijacks history, trauma, and icons, hacking a cultural database and remixing them into visual
aphorisms that resonate long after you scroll on.

And then there’s the villa itself. Built in the 1930s, its Art Deco corridors aren’t just a backdrop—they’re a co-conspirator. The exhibition’s tightly framed sightlines and theatrical staging turn each room into a whisper-box, where every pause feels freighted. You’ll pause, maybe take a photo, but often you’ll just stand, silent, unsure whether to laugh or listen.

Cattelan isn’t trying to wrap anything up neatly. What he leaves you with is a mood, an echo that
lingers as you walk out. Because sometimes, art doesn’t need to scream to change you. Sometimes,
a whisper is the thing that stays.