The project Atlas dei Corpi was born as an artistic practice around a specific monument to investigate alternative forms of memorisation and collective narrative to monuments. Inserting herself in an international debate that includes the politics of public space (and the need to recontextualise historical memories), post-colonial heritage and gender issues, Simona Da Pozzo proposes a shift from the verticality and untouchability of monuments towards an open and relational dimension.

The monument at the centre of this multidisciplinary artistic research is the Corpo di Napoli: a statue from the 2nd century AD dedicated to the River Nile, located in the heart of Naples. The research, ongoing since 2019, has gone through phases of study, activities in public space, performances and production of works, in close relationship with the city, cultural institutions and the inhabitants of Naples and in dialogue with scholars in Italy and abroad. The river, symbol of the relationship with the environment and the processes of socialisation, protagonist of the monument in Naples, has been a formal and symbolic guiding element of the project in other places and other declinations