presented by GIOVANNA CALVENZI

Born in 1946 in Italy. Lives and works in Milano.

Director of photography for various Italian magazines, exhibition curator, artistic director of the Rencontres d’Arles in 1998.

Moira Ricci’s project began five years ago when her mother died. Pain, regret, nostalgia and a need to remember and relive exist at the core of an operation searching for its place in a creative process. Moira Ricci is on a journey back in time, through a memory not her own, with the declared intention of thus restoring a connection, of constructing an impossible shared past. She used her mother’s family album, appropriating, manipulating and reinventing pictures.

Giovanna Calvenzi

20.12.53–10.08.04

20.12.53–10.08.04 was born at a moment while I had eyes only for my mother’s photos. She had just disappeared, and it was my huge desire to be close to her and to spend with her the time I didn’t spend, either because I was not born yet or because I wasn’t present. Photography becomes the way we can meet in an illusion: I become an image to be close to her and to observe her, adopting the dress and hairstyle of the period when the photo was taken, the simple and modest way she dressed. When I look at her, I try to make a stronger connection between us, and although people in images can’t speak, with my look I am hoping to make her understand that she is in danger, I am waiting for her to turn to me so we can jump out of the picture together. If it doesn’t happen, I will accept it and stay in the images, next to her, forever.

In front of just one picture people can’t really understand the meaning of the work: I think that the disclosure comes by watching at least two images, or more, because in all the pictures I glance at my mother and my presence may seem somewhat estranged.

Moira Ricci

www.alessandrodemarch.it

Moira Ricci is represented by Alessandro De March Gallery, Milan, Italy.

Prints by DUPON Digital Lab.

Framing by Jean-Pierre Gapihan.