Grounded: photo series

The Grounded photo series draws inspiration from the Mesopotamian tale “The Descent of Ištar into the Underworld”,  translating mythological motifs into a contemporary meditation on space, absence, and potentiality. Emerging from a collective excavation activity within the exhibition The Source of the Work, curated by Davide Silvioli, the series transforms physical intervention into a visual language that examines the intersection between human action and void.

The excavated voids, created through tactile engagement with the ground, are presented as gestational chambers. Within these spaces, the conditions for alternative systems are incubated—systems that resist anthropocentric categorization and challenge conventional perceptions of form, function, and hierarchy. The act of excavation thus becomes both performative and conceptual, signaling a movement beyond the visible and predictable, toward conditions in which the human gaze is no longer the primary structuring force.

In the photographic series, the concept of emptiness is amplified through careful deconstruction of the image itself. Portions of the visual field are intentionally omitted, producing gaps that emphasize absence as a structural element rather than a mere void. The inversion of frames evokes a crossing of thresholds into subterranean or liminal realms, drawing attention to spaces that are usually hidden, disregarded, or avoided. This disruption of conventional visual expectation invites reflection on perception, engagement, and the limits of familiar experience.

Ultimately, Grounded functions as a critical exploration of absence, decay, and the incubation of possibility within unstructured or marginal environments. The series emphasizes the productive potential of emptiness, framing voids not as negative spaces but as sites of latent agency and transformation. Through its interplay of excavation, photographic deconstruction, and threshold crossing, the work interrogates human-centered assumptions and highlights the possibilities inherent in non-anthropocentric systems. By situating perception within conditions of absence, Grounded presents a philosophical and aesthetic meditation on entropy, marginality, and the emergence of forms that exist beyond normative structures of recognition and control.