By interweaving her work with her mother's writing (from a diary called ‘Letters to a man I have never had’) and ripped archival images, Martina Zanin, a visual artist born in San Daniele del Friuli, manages to tell a very personal, intimate story that can resonate universally. In her photobook “I Made Them Run Away” she talks about love, loss, anger and absences, while tracing an unflinching portrait of different relationships and their darkest sides. The artist is presenting her book, published by Skinnerboox, at Micamera on Tuesday, December 14 from 6.30pm. and this is our Q&A.
How did you first get interested in photography?
Photography came into my life when I was 16 years old. In the beginning I wanted to focus on fashion photography being influenced by America’s Next Top Model - lol. Later on, after starting my studies in Photography I discovered different approaches. It was only at the last year of the academy that I felt the need to tell something more personal and I developed my first series rinnegato (2016), composed of still lives and fragments of bodies used as metaphors to retrace the complicated relationship with my father.
What is photography for you?
I know what is not for me. It is not a document, not a tool for investigation, not a proof of reality, not even a therapeutic practice - because as Louise Bourgeois said: art is only a sedative, problems come back all the time. What photography is for me I am still trying to figure it out. Right now I can say that I use it to represent what is not visible - such as emotions, sensations, and suggestions - to pick up the pieces of a turbulent past that are pouring into the present.
What is the picture that made you fall in love with photography?
There is a series of images that I strongly remember from my childhood. I do not know if those are the pictures that made me fall in love with photography but they sure are pretty odd and creepy pictures that remained in my mind. My grandmother came from this small village in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Every month she received this local magazine with news, facts, and obituaries. When I went to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, she always gave me this magazine to read and I remember having this great fascination for the obituaries page, which was a series of small portraits of people who died in the last period.
Can you talk to me about I Made Them Run Away?
“How could you possibly make them all run away?” This was the phrase my mother used to yell, blaming me for the end of her relationships. From here the title I Made Them Run Away, which is a multi-layered story that weaves together archive images, photographs, and texts to retrace the recurring complicated triangle relationship between me, my mother, and the “man”. It explores the transition of feelings within relationships and their dynamics - the need for attention, the expectations that cause disillusionment, insecurity, and judgment. My mother’s constant research for a partner to create the “perfect family” has brought her to know, and to make me known, dozens of different men, many of whom have lived in our home. The project started with the personal need to understand the origin of my relational issues with men, wondering how much these past relationships and this continuous exposure to men have affected my perception of the male figure and the way I relate to it. Since I was a child I remembered my mother ripping photographs at the end of her relationships and preserving her figure, or mine, within the family photo albums. These ripped pictures, along with the texts that come from a diary written by my mother, entitled Letters to a Man I have Never Had and addressed to an imaginary man, were the base for the project. From those I started to reconstruct my memories and I gave them shape. In fact, every other picture is the visual representation and expression of emotions and sensations surfaced in the present, such as anger, disgust, or tension. The archive images and the texts are my mother’s point of view and were used to create a dialogue between me and her in two different moments of time but on the same life experience. There is me, her, and that so present absence of the men. They are no longer there but their presence is widespread within the work through their absence and their passage. There is this phrase by Ingmar Bergman which I really like to use, and I think it represents very well my whole artistic research: “If your tooth hurts, your tongue keeps going there. You are always conscious of a wound.”
How important is text in your work?
Words have importance for me, but not alone. Texts are as important as images, or other media I decide to use in my work. They go together, they compensate, they reiterate, they intensify. They can create a bridge between things that seems unconnected. In I Made Them Run Away I have used my mother’s words to show a different side of the same person, a more vulnerable and romantic part which is in contrast with the instinct and anger represented by the ripped images. For future projects, I have started to use my own texts - phrases, poems, or thoughts, also connected to existing texts, like essays, or novels. I do not only use text within my work, but I always refer to texts when working, and sometimes I find phrases that take the shape of an image when they are read.
Do you think about your work in single images or series?
I think about my work in series or long-term projects in which sequence and narrative are important and changes according to the final format. I do not have any limit when the work is in progress, and I find stimulating to think of it in different forms. There are some works that are born as books and are transformed into exhibitions, and vice versa, there are installations that become books. I want my work to be an experience whatever its format is, and I am thinking about new ways of presenting it, using a multimedia approach and letting myself be influenced by outer worlds - cinema, music, narratives, scientific studies, etc. I also do not exclude the possibility to transform one of my projects into a movie, one day - this is the dream.
Can you walk me through your creative process?
My working method is divided between research, imagination, and impulse. Emotions and memories play an important role in the process of creation and production, which is divided among previously noted or drawn ideas, photographs taken more instinctively, and photographs and scraps from my personal archive. The same process is applied when I work on the sequence, I always look for associations between the images and the other media, whether visual or metaphorical; there’s always a combination of instinct and logic. I mainly use photography associated with other media, including writing, archive material, video, sound, and sculpture. This multimedia approach allows me to create multiple-level narratives within which narrative spaces and perceptions intertwine, experimenting with different forms of language. The use of metaphors gives me the possibility of translating a given emotion or concept into another dimension, it is the tool I use to make my personal life accessible and make tangible what is not. My way of expression is poetical - evocative pictures of details and fragments are often put one after the other or alongside other media, seeking to activate new levels of meaning by creating visual and conceptual associations and dynamics, in an attempt to go beyond what is visible.
How do you manage to tell such a personal story in a universal, relatable way? Where is the balance?
The secret to tell a personal story in a universal way, for me is to tell it through emotions. There is nothing more universal than the personal. Which sounds like a paradox, but if you think about it we all want or tend to, relate to other people's stories, find points of connection, identify. When we share a personal experience we can feel less alone. I think the balance has to be found within ourselves - as artists - being always true to ourselves and the others about what we are telling, why, and how.
What do you look for in an image?
When I look at an image I turn it inside my head into a moving image, I bring it to life or I teleport into it. I look for a thread in the images that can be visual or mental, instinctive or logical. In I Made Them Run Away, for example, the photo of a little girl touching an Adam’s apple is a scene full of tension that goes to vent in the next image, that of a wave that breaks on a staircase. I perceive the sensation, the emotions, I hear the sounds, I distinguish the hardness of the Adam’s apple and the sound of the waves that break against the rock. It is not just about observing, it is about penetrating into a parallel world, and that’s what I am trying to convey because I think each of us needs to be able to do that, it is a need to feel.
What are you currently working on?
I just finished working on a multimedia installation entitled Older Than Love, which is an introduction to my next long-term project Please, don’t ever come down, that I expect to complete by 2023. The work takes the complicated relationship with my father as the starting point developing it through the metaphor of the hawk and its prey and creating a parallelism between animal and human aggression. It deals with the theme of aggression and emotional abuse in affective relationships; the desire of manipulation and domination and toxic masculinity. The installation is composed of photography, archive images, video, and sound. For the final version, I am planning to add other media, which are text and sculpture, using this multimedia approach to make manifest emotions and sensations through the solicitation of all the senses.
Besides this, I am working on smaller series and pieces around the nature of aggression and the functioning of memory, and I am also carrying on a research on the representation and relationship of text and sound in visual arts.
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