Gaia Caramellino’s photographic research visually translates into the exploration of her nomadic past. She calls it “home on the move,” the one she had during her childhood and as a teenager, growing up in a family with nomadic roots. Therefore, her investigation focuses on the concept of home, searching for the sacred and elusive aspect in the built-up childhood that each of us carries with us. The project entitled The Life I Gave You is a narrative reportage that traverses distant countries and roads. The protagonists are unknown to her, they are wandering nomads living in a condition different from the conventional one. Melancholy emerges in her shots by setting in motion an empathic process such that the viewer becomes familiar with the subjects by thinking about the concept of the border in a more welcoming way. We had already talked about border here on the occasion of the Collater.al Photography exhibition, of which Gaia Caramellino was a part. In her photographs, we read in Giulia Tofi’s text, the border «suddenly takes shape, becoming that place in which to turn out to be untraceable in order to find oneself every time». For this, space becomes a territory of encounter between the self and reality, between interiority and the world, thus becoming an aggregator and not a divider. Caramellino’s is a journey in search of her home through the faces and bodies of others. Where the other does not exist, where the other meets the self.
Gaia Caramellino’s works will be exhibited at the Liquida Photofestival in Turin from May 2 to 5, 2024.
Courtesy Gaia Caramellino
