Broken Into Traces

A dystopian depiction of humanity as traces left behind. Questioning a new alienation owing to a technology that intervenes modifying our relation with the physical world. Moving through the concepts of "non-places" and identity.

My work gravitates around an investigation on human experience as a result of a technology that intervenes, modifying our existence, perpetually overcoming all imaginable limits. I focus my attention on the linkage between the idea of “Non-places” and the perception of identity. Thought of as the virtual places we inhabit, the non-places are here traced as dystopian features of the physical world.

Are we still capable of inhabiting the perceptible world? If physical places are conceived as the architects of our social identity; if, to a certain extent, we are the places we inhabit, how does the abrupt shift from the “physical” to the “virtual” influence the process of self-recognition? And yet, more extensively, how is Human Intelligence reshaping before the ever-growing status of artificial intelligence in the society? Until when will we be able to distinguish the two poles? What is the destiny of our individual and collective imaginary? 

In the attempt of depicting the invisible, I find myself poised between two worlds, walking on the thin line that intertwine Utopia and Dystopia, in a border area where the identity is disrupted. In this scenario, the Body resists and exists, carries an ancestral memory, invokes a sense of nostalgia. On one level, I portray people from my community as traces of humanity left behind. Exposing the body in situations of vulnerability, I bring up a new alienation, a sense of dissociation, a feeling of threat and inferiority against the conversely perfect, apparently immortal, and yet unknown AI. Questioning as well the systems of control over our wills and desires, a control no longer imposed but requested by the majority of us. On another level, I confront the physical and emotional state of the people I portray. In the pursuit of nostalgic elements such as scars, skins, bruises, tears, and blood, I seek what sets us apart from robots, androids, and humanoids.

Ultimately, I challenge photography as a tool able to slow down time and decolonise the fantasy. Mitigating my personal anxiety for a looming apocalyptic future, I confront the collective perception in order to find new ways to navigate through the mutation.