Unfinished House

The house my grandparents built, once home to four generations, now lies in ruins. As it empties, I reflect on memory, family, and legacy, salvaging fragments through art. Amid decay, memories endure—reminding life is fleeting, transformable, and fragile.

The house built by my grandparents, Lina and Genaro, Italian immigrants who arrived in Buenos Aires in the mid-20th century and settled in the Floresta neighborhood, was once the family home where my father, Hugo, was born and died, and—in part—where I also grew up. Memories were forged inside that resonate in my memory, a past that, like the walls of the house, has crumbled over time. Today, none of them are with me, and the house has become a pure ruin, a skeleton of what was once a home.

As a witness to loss and the passage of time, I reflect on the memory of places, family memories and their fragility, as well as the profound responsibility of what remains and the connections that persist. The house is about to be demolished, and everything seems to be coming to an end. I wonder: how do you keep a memory alive when everything that represents it is being lost? As the house began to empty, I felt that emptiness mirrored within me. Questions that hadn't been formed before emerged: I looked to the past and asked myself, "Who were we?" "What legacy do I carry?" Four generations lived in this house, and now I find myself wondering, "Who do I want to be in the future?" "Do I really want to start a family?"

For years, the bond with my father was broken. However, before he died, we were able to reconnect. Over time, I realized that even beneath the ruins, it's possible to salvage something valuable. Thus, in the face of this radical transformation of the inhabited landscape, I collect fragments and explore the house's various surfaces, silent witnesses to family history: from the leaves of the tree my grandmother planted and now withering away, to the now-collapsed roofs and walls my grandfather built, and the shattered windows . I return to the printing trade my father began in this house—which over time ceased to be just a home and also became a printing press—and imprint a memory on each object through alternative photographic techniques. It's a way of resisting, of honoring a memory that—like the ruins—is on the verge of disappearing, recognizing myself in the family legacy in an attempt to keep alive the memories and emotions that once inhabited this place.

Like the ruins of the house and the images that dissolve in the light, my memory is made of fragments that, as they fade, remind me of the transience and fragility of what I've lived through. In the process, the debris becomes amulets, and I understand that there is no permanence, only transformation. There is no preservation, only metamorphosis.