The exhibition Le Tit by the North American artist Leigh Ledare opens at 7 p.m. on Thursday 10 June 2010 at Guido Costa Projects in Via Mazzini 24, Turin.

The exhibition Le Tit is the fruit of many years labour that the artist is constantly adding to whenever it is shown. It is an exemplary exhibition of rare sincerity and crudeness that has been causing outcry and fierce debate on both sides of the Atlantic ever since the first version appeared two years ago.

There are few themes that bear the rubber stamp of moral and aesthetic prohibition, even though they find expression in a world where all ideological and ethical limits seem to have been left behind. But domestic eroticism, parental unions and filial love represent a few black holes in the fabric of common morality - uncomfortable voids that do not even dare thinking about. These are the murky spaces between what is said and what is left unsaid, the dark recesses of our conscience.

The work of Leigh Ledare probes these shadowy regions uncensored: in some instances he even does it with candid impertinence. Thus said, one might expect to come across an expression of truth-art here, examples of which we have become accustomed to at the beginning of this century, yet another attempt to explore the morally outre that has enticed entire generations of artists to stir up a bit of scandal, whatever the cost, by carefully and knowingly seeking them out at the base camp of the extreme.

Le Tit could mistakenly be parcelled up with all these goings on - indeed becoming almost the epitome - if it weren't for that little, or better, much bigger something extra in this project.

The limits of the story narrated by the young artist from Seattle are soon delineated in their own crude simplicity: a petit bourgeois family from a US industrial metropolis; an anonymous and respectable terraced house; three generations forced to live together under the same roof; and only a camera and camcorder to witnesses events. But as soon as the walls become transparent, exposing everyday life between these walls, a centrefold of heaven and hell opens out in all its complexities, blurring the picture and leaving us confused.

Leigh changes from being subject and artist to pure mirror in which a bewildering analysis of affections and desires are acted out, and where nothing is withheld or beautified.

The leading lady of all the shots and related video confessions is Tina Peterson, Leigh's mother, ex-beauty queen now pushing middle age. She beams generous amounts of charisma and contradiction in equal measure - both angel and beast. Displaying her body in these photos she has longed to appear in, she lays claim to the title of creator and artist. And like a post-modern hetaera, fallen from the heavens of ancient Greece into suburban Seattle, she confirms her real ‘founding role', the role of one who, by ‘donating herself to the outsider', saves the soul of the city-state.

The sacrificial dimension of the story Tina acts out as woman and mother exorcises the work of any form of voyeurism: by offering herself up to the unforgiving lenses of her son's camera, she at once reconstructs the solidity of their bond and gives voice to a higher union, greater than the conventions filial relationships are built on.

The performance we see enacted in Le Tit is a convincing analytic study of parental relationships, with absolutely tragic implications. It is like a classical tragedy, when the mind of the one who experiences the drama is cleansed by witnessing the pieta and terror the protagonists are subject to through their misadventures.

It is hard not to see the whole exhibition as a deliberate performance based on a classical model. All the elements are there: the woeful chorus that comments the action as it unfurls (told by the fragile, drug addict second son); Tina's old parents, crystallised in the atemporality of illness; her many young and not-so-young suitors). But, in order for the tragic exorcism to have effect, everything has to be unveiled and made public: the desires, joy, tears and rage. These passions are transformed into the emotional coordinates in which the drama plays. Here the fundamental social roles of the polis (or the communal life of the family), waver until they disappear: what remains is the primigenial feminine force that gradually dons all its gamut of ritual masks, from Eirene to Medusa; from Antigone to Hecuba until Lilith.

The power of Le Tit resides wholly in this analytic surplus, in the fact that it is a terrifying apologue of the world's stage.

It is unlikely that anyone who sees this work will remain untouched by it. And, if they have a critical eye, they will pay heed to its therapeutic qualities. As happens when contemplating the tragedy of Oedipus, the one who was ‘endowed with an extra eye', we discover the excellence of ethos in that it has gone beyond the rules in the direction of the divine.

The Leigh Ledare exhibition will be open during gallery times until 10 September 2010.