I was born in the mid-1990s: part of a generation raised between promises of progress and scenarios of collapse, shaped by the sense of an imminent climate threat. The recurring emotional responses produced by this vulnerability have been recognized as a new psychological and social condition, recently termed eco-anxiety. Opera viva is an inquiry into this condition: a study of survival and of non-human forms of adaptation, born from the need to respond to this kind of disillusionment by observing how life continues to reorganize itself, despite everything. Visually, it takes the form of a chorus of mute presences, marginal life-forms: insects, algae, moulds, benthic (encrusting) organisms, alien species—after all, “invasive” may be read as “resilient” through an anthropocentric lens. The title comes from a term used in nautical contexts: opera viva (literally “the living part”) is the part of a vessel’s hull below the waterline, as opposed to the opera morta (literally “the dead part”). It is a zone where life thrives due to its proximity to water—an area of continuous negotiation with organisms that, even when deterred, proliferate in a tireless pursuit of possibilities for life. A metaphor of instability and a paradoxical overlap of states, where life and the absence of life coexist. A symbolic system that holds together a crack in the anthropocentric lens, an awareness of potential collapse, and a fragile yet stubborn insistence on hope. The work began from a need to locate hope and relief—something that could disarm a paralyzing vision of the current ecological condition. There is also an unexpected reaction that emerges from this shift in scale and perspective: the perception of insignificance—an unexpectedly reassuring kind of ego dissolution—that relativizes any form of individual disorientation.
Synanthropism — from the Greek syn (“together”) and anthropos (“human”) — refers to the adaptation of animal species to human environments, in close dependence on our activities. This project explores the cohabitation between humans and birds in Venice, where the lagoon landscape has fostered a unique synanthropic fauna: pigeons, gulls, and ibises. Their proliferation reflects systemic changes in the city, driven by tourism and rising waste. These birds occupy spaces abandoned by less resilient species, leaving visible traces in the urban fabric: spikes, predator silhouettes, reflective tape. Installed as deterrents, they resemble accidental installations — signs of an uneasy coexistence. Birds respond by inhabiting marginal, overlooked spaces, turning them into shelters. In this dynamic, the city becomes a stage, and the deterrent an aesthetic gesture.
The project was commissioned by LagunaB magazine
Animabilia investigates, through over ten distinct visual narratives, how the wonder sparked by animal beauty leads to practices of appropriation, imitation, and objectification. Through images of taxidermy, dioramas, zoos, tropicariums, and exotic animal farms, the project explores the contemporary translation of ancient practices, now sublimated into new forms. The ancestral attraction to the shapes and visual manifestations of the animal world represents a primordial aesthetic force. The appropriation of natural elements is an ancient phenomenon, driven by ritualistic, magical, or utilitarian reasons. Today, this fascination manifests in practices such as domestication, the manipulation of animal forms, or their transformation into objects. From an aesthetic perspective, the portrait of humanity emerges as one subjected to the beauty of the natural world, focused on attempting to capture its fleeting beauty through practices born in antiquity and now differently translated into the contemporary.
Can a photograph — a landscape, a detail, an object — evoke a sense of metaphysical transcendence, opening an imaginative passage to the sacred? This question guided the creation of this series, developed during a journey through the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Immersed in unfamiliar cultural and physical landscapes, I sought to produce images capable of triggering a fleeting sense of spiritual presence — a glimpse of another space, beyond the visible. The photographs stem from unexpected encounters and reflect on the potential of visual language to evoke sacredness, open to individual interpretation. Rather than offering answers, the images invite contemplation — leaving space for doubt.
