The project was born from the need to rethink the cultural and symbolic meaning of food — a source of nourishment and at the same time an ambiguous object that carries private and collective stories within it.
Deciphering these narratives allows us to reveal the fractures lurking within the contemporary, making it possible to question dominant logics and their everyday implications.
It all began with a memory: my father telling me how, on Sundays, toasted polenta would be rubbed against the dried anchovies hanging above the stove. Those anchovies, he told me as a child, were always kept there — hanging — for special occasions. Starting from this shared memory, I began to wonder how many other stories of care and attention to food might be hidden among family and friends. I discovered a world of simple but meaningful gestures: ways of preserving flavours and, with them, emotions. A universe far removed from the abundance and waste that dominate the capitalist logic of our contemporary lives.
With the help of artificial intelligence, I transformed those stories into images, seeking to preserve their essence and translate them into visual forms that could restore their value. The images were printed in multiple copies and crumpled — a gesture that echoes the waste and superficiality with which we discard essential goods, even while aware of their symbolic and material significance. One of these prints, however, is unfolded: a gesture of care and reclamation that, like a ritual, reverses course. This gesture reminds us that it is never too late to set out in the opposite direction.
"Prima che i ricordi sbiadiscano" is a tribute to peasant wisdom, an invitation to rediscover food in the present as something precious — capable of uniting past, present and future.
