Dimitri Mao Malcom
Development of a series of serigraphs on fresco, an innovative technique I created, where human and non-human images are arranged in urban spaces like specimens in a butterfly display case, evoking cataloging and memory.
By working with the reflective properties of surfaces, the relationship between materials and light is explored: the image emerges slowly, revealed by the refraction of light waves.
The poetic essence of the work revolves around the concept of “sacrifice,” both metaphorically and spatially.
Just as sacrificial plaster, typical of Venetian houses, wears away under the effect of salt to protect the bricks, these images represent lives lived but forgotten by history, maintaining a fragmentary and everyday brilliance.
The project focuses on the idea of a collective memory, reflected in these figures arranged like relics, symbols of ordinary lives, preserved from the passage of time through the use of the innovative technique of silkscreen printing on fresco.
The work combines visual figures with sound content and focuses on the search for the image that emerges in the absence of illumination, through the refraction of light coming from beyond our solar system.
The materials and techniques employed are the same as those used in Pompeii, as only lime can capture and amplify the effect of light as it passes through layers of mineral pigments, sand, and calcium carbonate—the very same elements that stars are made of. Lime sifts the light it receives, returning it to the human eye. The matter thus becomes a filter for light waves, a memory understood as entropy, a transfer of heat.
“Gradually, the differences between the contemporary habitat and the sites of archaeological past blur. Modern Europe would thus take on, subtly, a funerary aspect. Lost amid their contemporary suburbs, historic cities—palaces, cathedrals, museums—become like those ancient cities of the dead, with their tombs and mausoleums where weapons, transported treasures, familiar objects, and images of past pleasures were placed before the blind eyes of the deceased.”
(“Esthétique de la disparition”, Balland ed. 1980, Paul Virilio)
Mimimum Budget Commission $ 50.000,00