Unlike flowers
she won’t come back with spring
“ Dad.
Will Mum come back with spring
like flowers do? “
After almost 30 years of silence, I finally opened that closet where I confined the memory – and the absence – of my beloved mother, Emanuela, who died because of cancer when I was just two.
Unlike flowers, she won't come back with spring, portrays my journey through the traces she left on Earth, intending to capture some fragments of the person she was, and I cannot remember. There is no narrative to be retrieved or unveiled, no story to be told. The author of the project is the two-year old myself, who shared a little slice of time - 1044 days - with her. It is only through suggestions, and visual alliteration, that I try to surface fragments of her essence and existence. The absence of text, except for the short introductory paragraph, wants to set the childhood space I could experience with her.
To illustrate this journey, I juxtapose the renovating natural world against the fragments of her life that have been captured on film. I choose polaroids as physical building blocks for the reconstruction of her memory. The prosperous family archive acts as their counterparts, in the attempt to find a meeting point between us.
Halfway.
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You can find here the feature on LensCulture, written by brillant artist and writer Magali Duzant
