The exhibition, divided into three sections - Portrait collage, Archetypes and Urban - unfolds inside the Villa dei Papiri - which takes its name from the discovery of over a thousand rolls of charred papyrus in one of the otium villas of the Roman aristocracy located in the suburban area of Ercolano. Composed of three adjacent rooms, in a rhythmic dialogue between the city - outside - and the museum - inside - through the juxtaposition of works and images that represent a collective, archetypal memory, it unexpectedly arises in a reflection on the relationship between classical mythology and a contemporary mythology. The catalytic role of the archaeological find, of stratification in history, in the artistic process and in the expressive power of the gesture is evident, in relation to the museum container, guardian and conservator of collective memory.

If we bring our mind back to the work The Naked City, a collage created by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn in 1957, where a map of the city of Paris is reconstructed in fragments connected by red arrows, we will perhaps be able to grasp an assonance between the surrealist reflection of the city and of the concept of dérive that still runs through the alleys of Naples today, in its melancholy, in its duality, in the rapid passage from the darkness of narrow alleys to the zenith of large squares without shadows, without trees. The reflection starting from the dialogue between the works of the Portrait collage series - seven collages with portraits, painted on canvas, of iconic characters not only from the Neapolitan scene - and those of the museum's permanent collection, the use of images with a protective function, refers to The Greek essence is still inherent in this people today.

In the Archetypes series, composed of large collages on canvas, pieces of posters torn from the walls of the city of Naples have been recomposed, completed with pictorial interventions and stencils depicting iconic statues, frescoes and mosaics present in the Mann's permanent collection. Urban is a series of digital collages that portray with the bitter irony inherent in Neapolitan nature, the beauty and abandonment, the contradictions that make this city unique, still so ancient today, perhaps the last surviving bastion among ancient civilizations, it can be traced here, among these alleys, where instead of altars or steles dedicated to divinities or emperors, we find signs of another mythology, with popular and above all human divinities, who seem to watch over the fate of the city and its inhabitants.