Mutatis Mutandis

Mutatis Mutandis it's a Latin sentence that means, according to Wikipedia, once the necessary changes have been made. It is a sentence used—especially in law and science—when comparing two things, and one possesses some differences regarding the other one. Therefore, once all the necessary modifications have been made, the two things can be considered alike.

My exploration started with the Pandemic when everything shut down. Through the year that followed, amongst few openings in Switzerland, lucky me, there were also museums. I'm used to going to a different museum every week with my three-year-old daughter, carrying my camera and taking snapshots of everything that caught my eyes. Soon we realized that Science and Natural History museums were among our favourites and we started to explore repeatedly the same museums. This reiteration allowed me to see them with different eyes and teach myself to watch differently, concentrating on aspects other than the actual content of the exhibitions.

After a while, I started to reckon about the idea that holds up those museums. They define our world, and, at the same time, they are defined by it. Direct experience is rare and involves just a small group of people. What we experience is a story—a complex and elaborate system of narratives created in a stratified timeframe.

Mutatis Mutandis is an attempt to reinvent this process. It's a personal and imaginary narrative that overlaps the one embedded into a collective narrative. It's an alternative reality made from the same elements, creating an entirely new story. It's a reflection of how narratives are created and how they shape our world. Mutatis Mutandis is a fictional space, a generative act. It is a way to create a whole new set of interpretations from the same reality—a way to affirm a poetic attitude of challenging what has been given for granted.