The shape of our eyes, other things I wouldn‘t know (2024)
For a long time, I saw my father as a stranger: someone I didn't know how to talk to or spend time with. A few years ago, I found out about my grandfather's premature death, when my father was coming of age, and how, because of that loss, he had been forced to follow the same career path. I realised that the absence of a traditional paternal model was something that both he and I had in common. So I decided to focus on the question: what does it mean to be a good father? Traditionally, the father has the responsibility to work and provide. Through this distancing from the family, often both physical and emotional, the archetypal man can fulfil his obligations, and thus, his role.
In an attempt to create a connection with him, I visited his workplace and invited him to mine. They say the shape of our eyes, other things I wouldn’t know takes form as a series of attempts to get closer to my father, both physically and emotionally. The airport and the photography studio become the backdrops for our encounters, while photography serves as a key tool to explore our relationship, in a continuous exchange of roles. The project combines collaborative actions documented photographically, portraits, and archival material, brought together in eleven attempts to narrate an exploration that becomes mutual. Collectively, these images serve as tangible proof of our relationship, capturing both the distance and the need for connection.
They say the shape of our eyes, other things I wouldn't know wants to act as a bridge to distant generations, in which by facing the fear of seeing myself in my father, I become an example for him in terms of empathy. This project opens up questions related to vulnerability, seeks to question socially established norms, while aiming to activate a dialogue on intergenerational trauma, going beyond individual experience.
Attempt #1: Looking at you
Attempt #2: Observing what you carry every day
Attempt #3: Wearing your uniform
Attempt #4: Mimicking the positions you take
Attempt #5: Looking at the place where most of your time is spent
Attempt #7: Letting you play my role
Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, 2024
The house in which I grew up is not small. It is beautiful, has nooks, hidden rooms, windows that swing out wide open, and terraces to hang up the washes. There is a big garden, a lot of space to play on a hot summer day with all of the cousins, to run down the yard and hide between trees. It was my nonna, my fathers mother, who built it. After her husband’s early passing, she intended to make his dream reality. She wanted to create a space where the whole family could live together. Once completed, life started to unfold within its walls.
A house in its essence represents the family itself. It is the earth for roots to spread, the nest to grow, the space to expand. And a house should be full of noise, of aunties gossiping and music playing, of dogs barking and children laughing. When the house is silent, it means that the family is not working as it should.
Twenty years later, my father still lives by himself in the house in which I grew up.
When I come to visit, white walls scream of memories I was never a part of. By projecting archival images onto the walls of the house and then re-photographing them – human presence is brought back into the picture. Through installating the photographs of these beamed projections life-size and in context with an artificial window out of the house itself, the viewer becomes immersed in a story of a life that could have been. A space which is inhabited solely by traces becomes the stage where old memories get a second chance.
As above, so below,The Fool Collective,
The Grey Space in the Middle, The Hague, 2023
Lorena and Marino met in highschool, they got married when they were both 24, and moved into the family home, right after the wedding. When they reached 37, I was born. At 43, they got divorced. I was 6.
Today they are 63. I am 26.
The year my curiosity finally had me peek into the boxes in the back of the basement. What I discovered stashed away were the traces of a life lived in love.
Crops taken from my family archive, spanning from my parents first encounter, through their marriage and divorce, up until today.
Hand-bound 120gr Biotop, 18,4 x 13cm, Edition of 12, 2023