Open Theme nominee

In May 2023 the Romagna region in Italy was devastated by catastrophic floods. In few days, twenty-three streams came out of their bed flooding the countryside, cities and houses of forty-four municipalities. In the following days, I joined the ranks of the numerous rescuers. What I saw were the traces of the lives of thousands of people, irretrievably ruined and thrown into heaps on the streets. Furniture, but above all objects carefully stored for years inside the walls, inside the drawers, memories, traces of life, testimonies of relationships, now stained with mud and sewage, become waste waiting for a truck, destined to be erased from memory. On the asphalt I observed a sample of memories of people unknown to me, and I felt the need to document the excruciating inner emptiness caused by the monstrous intrusion of mud. If the identity is given by the set of memories, the loss of them creates a disintegration of the identity of the people. My act of keeping these traces is opposed to the gesture of throwing, it becomes a struggle between eternity and impermanence.

Elena Zanfanti (Ravenna, IT, 1979) is a visual artist, teacher and graphic designer. The artistic works include painting, photography and printmaking techniques. The recurring themes are identity’s impermanence and landscape, when it is a inner places’ mirror. The artistic production seeks silence to find inner listening. The work becomes the place of confrontation with own troubles.