HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY
Cianotype on canvas
Performance
Duration: 18'00'' ca
2023
How to disappear completely approaches the concept of disappearance through a transmedial language that brings photography, video and performance together.
The video depicts two hands dismembering a piece of canvas where a silhouette of two faceless women appears. The action continues until the image totally dissolves, thread by thread. The action continues until the image dissolves and there remains a mass of threads impossible to recompose.
The portrait was printed by using cyanotype technique, while the image comes from a personal archive of mortuary photographs, manipulated in Photoshop to hide the features of the face. The artwork acquires communicative power thanks to the very action of erasing, and has a strong link with the place of origin: a small village cemetery lost in the Tuscan countryside, Scansano.
The meticulous and deliberate action of dismembering can be interpreted as a shamanic ritual, since, in many of them, symbolic actions are carried out to access an alternative state of existence, where time flows differently. In this case, the fading represents a ritual of transformation, where it is possible to explore deeper spiritual dimensions, and simultaneously an attempt to move away from ourselves.
