Every time I look into one of the holes that tire this land, I find inside, broken, the spear of a man.
Every time I look into one of the holes that tire this land, I find inside, broken, the spear of a man.
Each year, the same day, the small settlements that sting the valley light up and spark. Disordered clusters of wood with the appearance of primordial huts are burned more or less clumsily, almost to prevent an undesired guest from returning.
If once scored, the trees began to bleed, relics would be carved instead of cut.
Here they say that man was created for heaven but the devil then broke the ladder leading to it. Because of being so high and near the sky, the ladder was much shorter than in other areas of the earth, but not more resistant to the blows of evil.
For many years I have tried to narrate a valley where I was born and where I’ve spent a lot of time since when I was a child even if I grow up in a big city like Milano. This valley is a place that I loved and hated, a place I’m tied to by an emotional link that involves me, my father passed away when I was fifteen and my mother disappeared one year ago.
Every night the trees along the road are awakened by the lights of the cars climbing the valley. At every hairpin turn, cones of light moves frantically in the forest as flashlights of guards seeking a fugitive.
The same places have changed; New rock formations and new cracks appear, like a body at the mercy of a disease that causes deep wounds and deforms what was familiar.
A smoke signal in this part of the world is unlikely. It is the cord hat joins the earth and sky like yolk and albumen or maybe it’s ust the contrail left by something that has abandoned the valley.
Only in the late adolescence I started hanging out with other youngsters who used to spend holidays in the valley. So far I had walked these paths exclusively with my parents, my first love, partners in a relationship that was about to end too soon.
One day I started building an object with branches and pieces of wood found in a clearing. It hurt me to look at those unused branches, motionless, without any chance of joining. I painted them white in such a way that, once separated from time and negligence, it was evident that those had been part of something unique and unrepeatable.
At a certain point I decided to put aside any kind of documentary approach with the awareness that I have never been interested in the beauty of natural scenery or in the objective reality of this place. I was interested in giving a voice to a place that changes, protects and destroys people, through its existence in our lives.
My father spent a lot of time on the mountains collecting minerals. He used to spend whole days smashing rocks with an hammer, like a sentenced to death, and eventually death came. His stones have remained to adorn its tomb and our home.
The lump in the throat is sharper, like a knife in a sack, ready to suddenly tear it apart. Her greenish and gray irises seem to pulsate, as chrysalises on the verge of opening up to reveal something wonderful but at the same time closer to death.
The wide open spaces of the valley have always given me the feeling that I can lose balance at any time and fall down from the surface of the planet.
When you grow up in a city, you begin to think that the streets have no end. Here I expect the road to end after each hairpin bend, after every tunnel. Sometimes You leave the car and proceed by foot. After the initial enthusiasm the forest becomes intricate, the landmarks are lost and then you start looking down towards the valley, trying to catch sight of the road before night falls.My eyes linger on the cars left in the layby where the road ends, covering themselves with dust after their owners in the woods have lost any hope.
Many people live their entire existence where the earth is stretched, ignoring these restless valleys that drag towards the sky.
In my work, memories of the time spent in this valley are mixed with dreams, nightmares and visions that my mind has set in this familiar and at the same time distant place, drawing on a sort of magical realism.
A swarm of crosses animates the side of the mountain. They should protect human beings from unpredictable nature but appear as trenches pointing to the sky in order to defend us from what we cannot understand.
Only in this place I enjoy the privilege of contemplating from above the clouds that people look at from below. Me and a few others in the face of the celestial orogenesis that transforms a few moments nearby mountains into distant islands.
Only in this place I enjoy the privilege of contemplating from above the clouds that people look at from below. Me and a few others in the face of the celestial orogenesis that transforms a few moments nearby mountains into distant islands.
Before I was ten, I often dreamed of a landslide that, after wiping out the mountain side, struck our house. It was summer, my family andI were sleeping, we were sleeping in that house. At that time I did not like to spend the holidays in this valley and I woke up almost relieved. A few years later in a nearby village, a huge boulder broke off from a ridge and dropped on a parked car. They could hardly see colored strips of the car body popping out under the monolith. The engine was hot. It took several hours to find out if there was someone inside the car.
Although the trail is impervious, I would like to try anyway, to get to touch it. It’s solid, immovable, like the water of a diorama. I would like to see the ripples produced by the touch of a finger, chasing up in order to return the appearance of a lake to what isn’t anymore.
In a dream that chases, when I am far away, I continue to review the paths that I have traveled and the flowers that I have touched. The smell is now gone but the memory persists in the valley that I planted.
In a time where people look at photographs faster and faster, I decided to use a photographic language that would induce the observer to linger, to move closer and to squint in order to get used to the darkness of these iridescent images that conceal a personal journey towards the reckoning with this valley.
