party hats based on Goya’s engravings

In the eighteenth century, people accused of heresy, as depicted in the paintings and engravings of Goya, were condemned to the stake. Their hats — the capirotes — two centuries later underwent a radical shift in meaning. After curious reappropriations and reversals, the pointed hats, once tools of stigma and marginalization, were transformed into party hats. 

Starting from the capirote engraved by Goya in No hubo remedio (There Was No Remedy), I redesigned them as birthday hats. In one hall of Palazzo Te, for the exhibition Non poteva essere altrimenti (It Could Not Have Been Otherwise), created together with the painter Jacopo Zambello, these hats were distributed to visitors and placed throughout the space, to alter the perception of the works, the environment, and the event itself.