Introducing after us: what remains when we're gone
We live in an age defined by instability: war, climate crisis, fragile democracies, and runaway technologies. The future is no longer just a promise—it has become an unknown, at times a threat. Within this fragile context, one question persists:
What will we leave behind?
Not only in ecological or economic terms, but culturally, symbolically, and as human beings.
A dialogue between past and present
After us is a contemporary art project, born during an artistic residency at the Archaeological Museum of the Musei Oliveriani in Pesaro, in collaboration with Centrale Fotografia.
The work began with a fascination for the Necropolis of Novilara, where funerary objects—particularly those buried with women—tell powerful stories about lives long gone. These ancient traces evoke identity, ritual, memory, and belonging.
Passing through
2025, 40x60cm, inkjet print on Hahnemühle photo rag, edition 3 + 1AP
The ancient goddess
2025, from the series After Us
Large-scale photographic image on textile (variable dimensions)
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Holding time
2025, 40x60cm, inkjet print on Hahnemühle photo rag, edition 3 + 1AP
From ancient artifacts to contemporary absence
In the Picene burial sites, every object is a fragment of someone’s story. But what about us? If someone unearthed our graves 3,000 years from now, what would they learn about who we were?
Today, our funeral rituals are often sterile and minimal—devoid of references to our culture, values, or personal identity. Death has become a taboo, hidden from view and stripped of meaning. Unlike ancient societies, we die in anonymous hospital rooms, far from community and symbolism.
What have we lost by removing art, ritual, and collective experience from the way we confront death?
A personal and artistic reflection
During the residency, a profound personal event—the loss of the artist’s father—intertwined with the research, shifting the work into new emotional terrain. After us became an exploration of both private grief and universal absence.
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I left the light in, 2025
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.jpg) After Us, Trittico 2025, 60x30cm, inkjet print on Hahnemühle photo rag, framed, museum glass, edition 3 + 1AP |
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After Us, Panel II, Trittico
2025, 20x30cm, inkjet print on Hahnemühle photo rag, framed, museum glass, edition 3 + 1AP
Through photography, video, sound, and installation, the exhibition becomes an immersive space—where objects, images, and voice interact to create a symbolic, inner landscape.
The goal is not to provide answers, but to offer a space for reflection:
Are we still leaving traces behind?
What kind of culture will survive the collapse we fear?
exhibition photography: Onirico Studio ph.