Unlike Flowers

By exploring the rich family album and juxtaposing it with my personal practice, I try to recreate the conversation I have never had the chance to have with my mother Emanuela.

Dad.

Will Mum come back with Spring

like flowers do?

I was three years old when I asked this question. It was the spring after my mother, Emanuela, died of cancer. To bereave as a child is a complex issue, as it is not a loved one that is missed - as there is no memory of the mourned person. For many years I have mourned and missed the archetype of the Mother, rather than person Emanuela was. As such, for thirty years I didn't look for her image. I had only seen the few pictures that my relatives had exposed in their homes. It was nothing intentional or deliberately chosen. Only, for thirty years, I had never considered it as a possibility.

Unlike Flowers , portrays my journey through the traces she left on Earth, intending to capture some fragments of the person she was, and I cannot remember. To illustrate this journey, I juxtapose the renovating natural world against the fragments of her life that have been captured on film. I use polaroids as a metaphor of physical building blocks for the reconstruction of her memory. The prosperous family archive acts as their counterparts, in the attempt to entertain the conversation we never had and find a meeting point between us - halfway - to ultimately demonstrate that Emanuela is more than the mere narrative I have been told.