Scars

A collection about memory, inspired by my beloved city of Berlin

Scars have been a constant presence in my life. Whether physical, historical, or psychological, the time and place I inhabit have always been marked by wounds and suffering.

The city I chose as my home is among the most scarred places in Europe. There, I encountered all kinds of wounded people and their fractured identities, while shaping my own — no less fractured at the time.

At some point, I began to focus on a particular depiction of the wounds of the past, and the project Scars emerged.

Now, years later, with enough distance and thanks to the invitation of my friend Riccardo, who asked me to participate in his itinerant art festival Global Futur, I am returning to my concrete scars.

I will present a series of 18 cyanotype prints from the project at the beginning of December in Berlin.

I’m very much looking forward to coming home dressed in Prussian blue.

Here are the project description and gallery.

See you then.

Venice, November 2025.

Scars

The project confronts the theme of historical memory in Berlin, Germany, as reflected in the numerous works of memorial art that populate the city’s public spaces.

My starting point for this project is an imagined flight over the city of Berlin. I picture myself observing the city from above, in a sight that resembles Peter Falk’s view in the opening scene of Wings of Desire. I see a modern city, where the ancient has been systematically dismantled by wars and walls. The New has filled the empty gaps in a desperate struggle to restore life – and to stay alive in the process. I see a city that evolves as if everything were normal, though in truth, nothing is. The very roots of the identity of today’s Europe lie upon the skin of Berlin. Any attempt to create a shining Potsdamer Platz crashes against the awareness of what that place once was – not so long ago. A giant wound.

With German reunification came a set of problems rooted in the concept of Memory.
Two different countries were coming together to form a new and renewed unity, and they faced the dilemma of which version of history to incorporate into their now shared cultural identity. History becomes such only when the past is written down, thus the pen and paper it gets written with become crucial to its very definition.
There is therefore not one History, but rather one version of it that gets passed on each time to the next generation(s) and is more or less shared by the members of a community.

What happened in Germany three decades ago was the merging of two communities, two deeply different societies, each with its own narrative about what had happened during the previous one hundred years or so.
Each Germany had written its own memory, had erected its own memorial sites. Each reflected on its own history and placed emphasis on symbols and meanings of its own, often quite different from those of the other half.
Strolling through Berlin today feels like walking through a playground of memory, with a vast amount of places conceived to arrest the walker and have them stop. Pause, think back and reflect.

There is an obvious referent when visiting a memorial site: the historical fact to which the memorial is dedicated. From that fixed point a variety of other branches of meaning emerge, each casting light from a different angle upon the memorial site.
When was the work of art built, i.e., in which historical and political context? By whom was it built – is it a public intervention, or a work of art by the people? What traces of the commemorated event are still tangible in the world that exist when the memorial is built? How does the memorial site commemorate – by depiction, suggestion or information?
The German language has a term for all and more of these conceptions of memory. Everybody else just calls them memorials. I call them scars.

As I fly over the city that is what I see: a scarred landscape, a piece of the world where every wound is covered by a piece of art. The map of pain becomes a map of art, a parcours of humankind’s search for meaning (frankl). Some memorial sites display a juxtaposition of meanings, because they were born in a world that does not exist anymore, but lives on in the meaning they carry with them of their past reason for existence. Some others were conceived and built in reunified Germany, but are nevertheless extremely complex and in no way exhaustive.

For all these reasons my research focuses on detail. I choose to show parts of the memorial sites as they display fragments of history – a partial perspective, a fraction of a healing process. The scars of the city must be displayed to remember the wounds, though they can never be considered a full stop on the theme they display nor presume to exhaust the process of healing.

In 2025 I am presenting a selection of 18 pictures from the Scars series as kick off for the Global Future Festival in Berlin. I am printing on cyanotype, a little bit for technical reasons, but also to bring some color to a somewhat gloomy project in the gloomiest month, and to work with Prussian Blue on my way back to Berlin, which has been my home for twenty years.