PENUMBRA Members Gallery | FILIPPO BARBERO
Filippo Barbero’s project Borderland is an investigation on the landscape, and specifically a small town of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, that blurs into the intimate life of the author in a poetic and touching way. His gaze focuses on the interstitial moments of the place, recalling details of the past as well as suggesting potential messages for the future. In this dance between what’s been lived and what’s to come, the land becomes a vehicle for re-elaborated memories and uncharted new possibilities.
- Giada De Agostinis
Borderland
"All things in life that once existed tend to re-create".
Borderland is the act of my Self, aimed at an attempt to claim back an experience that has constructed my identity since my tender years. This work is expressed in several concurrent, consequent, and heterogeneous aspects: it is a place, a transition of age, a group of people, a way of living, a critical thinking, a stream of memories, a set of disappointed expectations and potential ideas. To me everything is bordered in this small town on Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and it is this dimension of indefiniteness that pushes me to a relentless pursuit for the traces of a time that I have not lived enough or that I have lived too much.
My past blends with my present and suggests my future steps (to me). I do not know whether I should listen to it or let myself be carried away by the fresh wind – that same wind that in hot summer nights accompanied me and my grandfather. We used to have conversations about existentialism while marvelling at the beauty of the constellation, lying downhill on a wet meadow.
Everything that surrounds me wants to get close to me, rethinking the legacy of a relationship created in time: with this aim, begins a process of interpreting reality without a celebratory, symbolist nor documentary intent. Rather, it turns out to be an evolution aimed at a deep redemption of my past and present being, producing at the same time an emotional tension that, just as on an extremity, hovers between joy and pain.
In such research, which aims to establish a continuous dialogue between memory, reality and dream, I try to retrace over time fragments of an existence inherent to the concepts of family, growth and belonging.
Artist Bio
Filippo Barbero (1992) is a photographer and visual artist based in Florence, Italy. His personal works focus especially on long-term projects driven by a personal visual research referring to something intimate, creating connections with themes that concern memory, the sense of belonging and the investigation of the concept of place. His work has been exhibited in national and international galleries, institutions and festivals and obtained numerous prizes and publications.