Yalda Asfah: Still in the Dark

"Still in the Dark" by Yalda Afsah is curated by Maurin Dietrich

In her practice, Yalda Afsah explores how ritualized violence and conformity shape communities, and how contemporary anxieties emerge within them. "Still in the Dark" at Ca’Buccari presents two films and an installation facing the public park, following bodies caught in collective rituals that blur agency and submission.

The exhibition space, connected to the park and lagoon, sits between institutional structure and everyday life. Afsah’s installation occupies this threshold: photographs mounted on translucent doors show abandoned and carefully arranged clothing, pointing to absent bodies.

The first film, "Jarramplas" (2024), is set in Piornal, Spain, where teenagers gather annually for a ritualized street event involving thrown vegetables. The film keeps the central figure outside the frame, emphasizing collective focus and controlled violence.

The work reflects on how practices that resist clear explanation are often pushed into narratives of irrationality or historical “darkness,” revealing more about the present than the past. Afsah ultimately questions the limits of modernity’s promise that what is understood can be controlled.