Massimo Mastrorillo: Aliqual

Isolab, Venice-based photography research centre, presents “Aliqual”, a photographic exhibition by Massimo Mastrorillo.

The word “Aliqual” derives from a game consisting of repeating a word again and again until its meaning breaks down and becomes something mysterious that disorientates us and gives us the opportunity to imagine a world that has suddenly become something else. In this case, “Aliqual” is the result of the repetition of “L’Aquila”, the name of an Italian city hit by a destructive earthquake in 2009.

Over six years, Massimo Mastrorillo travelled to L’Aquila on several occasions, making the transition from the documentation of the aftermath of the 2009 earthquake to a visual exploration focusing on a shadowy area, where a currently uninhabitable world seems to be coming back to life.

Leaving behind the archipelago of the new suburbs built following the earthquake, Massimo Mastrorillo returned to the city centre, but this closing in drew him into a centrifugal dynamic: in his photographs, fragments and ruins seem to come to life in an improbable dystopian future that becomes the metaphor of a much further-reaching crisis, beyond the effects of an event – the earthquake – that is still far from being overcome.

Everything is subject to continuous metamorphoses, and the organic mingles with the disorganic. No sooner do you immerse yourself in these settings than you find yourself elsewhere, like in a play of mirrors where the perception of things goes adrift.

“Aliqual” is also a book, which will be presented to the public on 28th May at 7pm, during the opening of the photographic exhibition.