DIAMBRA
MARIANI

My psychotherapist used to say that love stories are interesting only when they start and when they finish, because what’s in between is boring.

However, this is precisely the object of my visual investigation: what happens within this time frame?

I have eventually decided to use a wonderful poetry book as a file rouge: “Power Politics” by Margaret Atwood, which was published in 1971 but - at least in my opinion, even if it’s analyzing only male/female dynamics- is definitely still relevant as it questions the power relationship between two persons in the context of a romantic bond. And, even more important, it sounded as it was written for me.

Atwood describes the couple as a territory of war, a challenge between the two, with all the contradictions, the dichotomies and the ambiguities that inhabit a lovers’ relationship.

It was to me a decisive antidote to solitude and shame, unveiling the fact that certain domestic, private, untold dynamics are simply human, and as such quite universal.

The voice that tells the story is full of sharpness, ferocity and honesty, ranging from hatred to tenderness, from the fear of being exposed or abandoned to the power of a deep encounter.

My experiment now is to transform some of her poetic verses into images, using association, illustration and symbolism and mixing digital photography, Polaroids, intervened and painted photos, drawings and videos.

My goal would be to create a coherent body of visual work which, even if quite abstract, is self-sufficient, but that is still deeply enriched by the textual part.

It is crucial for me to transform my personal experience into something which is not only personal.

Let’s say that, once the project is finished, I would like to be able, in order to describe it, to use the same words that an Italian writer recently used to describe her new book: “Yes, it is an autobiography , but not mine”.

The title of the project, beside being a verse from a poem of the collection (the second part of “Hesitations outside the door”) aims to underline - with a certain humor - the frustration deriving from awareness of all the energy and effort that is generally dissipated in order to make a relationship work.