Reconnections

Reconnections is the story in images of the drama of reality immersed in water and mud to be remedied quickly, the restoration of normality to reconnect with the vital. Accompanied by the stories and smiles always present on the faces of the people of Romagna, I listen and when possible I portray a sad and fatal passage.

Having arrived in Romagna hit by the floods of May 2023, it began, due to the road blocks, I took the wrong road and found myself directly in the city center of Faenza. I was overwhelmed by a frenzy of vehicles, people armed with buckets and spades, all covered in mud from head to toe, a post-war atmosphere that I had only seen in films. People running here and there like industrious ants, heads down and full of resilience, in the face of the unimaginable.
Walking around the vast damaged territory, the smells, different, dense, penetrating, struck me and stayed within me. The smell of mud, which gradually transformed into fine, swirling dust from Forlì to Brisighella; the salty scent of the stagnant water in the countryside around Conselice, which became increasingly acrid and pungent in the city centre, and then transformed into an unbreathable stench of putrefaction in Voltana.
At the edges of the roads an infinite number of objects like mountains of rubbish. Visions are transformed into fixed reproductions of reality; they have become still frames, incorporating sensations, reflections, lights and colors that not even water can extinguish. A petrified reality that becomes sculpture.

Walls like canvases on which to repaint a new story, where the awareness of the preservation of the environment, as necessary as it is indispensable, becomes an essential reason for life. Yes, because what surrounds us is life, memory, art, be they toys, furniture, books, digital circuits that convey the virtual. It is the drama of reality immersed in water and mud that must be quickly remedied, the restoration of normality to reconnect with the vital. Accompanied by the stories and smiles always present on the faces of the people of Romagna, I listen and when possible I portray a sad and poetic transition.”