In L'uomo delinquente (2025), Sala reveals, on an old
porcelain head, the division that supported phrenology—a pseudoscience
developed by Franz Joseph Gall in the 19th century. This division would show
specific “organs” or areas that controlled different mental faculties, and the
shape of these areas, reflected in the skull, indicated the development and
strength of those faculties. The sculpture is accompanied by books gilded with
gold leaf, in which concepts and attributes associated with behavior can be
read, such as a dangerous sublimation of the emotional and moral dispositions
that almost portray—from a biopolitical point of view—the subject who will have
to make his way through the 20th and 21st centuries.