lone swimmers in the surge's grey[...]
Mixed media installation
ongoing
lone swimmers in the surge's grey[...] is an installation that explores the concept of cultural apocalypses, a term borrowed from Ernesto De Martino to describe moments when a collective value system begins to collapse, threatening a community’s ability to make sense of its historical experience. The work investigates how images persist through such crises—surviving as visual “ghosts” that carry emotional memory across generations. Drawing inspiration from Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas and Georges Didi-Huberman’s reflections on the atemporality of images, the project focuses on iconographies of loss and hope, and their role in transmitting affective memory.
The installation is part of an ongoing research into the materiality of images—how they manifest as both solid objects and ephemeral light. It combines sculptural and optical elements to explore the question: Where are images born, and how do they manifest? This inquiry led to the development of custom-built projection devices that operate outside conventional formats. These devices are crafted using salvaged components, microcontrollers, and DIY prototyping techniques, and are designed to animate light through motion, opacity, and absence.
Presented during the exhibition Rewriting the Future at Park, Tilburg and at Soup, Rotterdam.
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Ovunque e sempre proteggimi
Always and everywhere bless me
Mixed media installation
2023
Ovunque e sempre proteggimi is a mixed media installation that stems from an ongoing research into folk religious worship and its visual language, particularly the iconography of holy cards and ex-votos. In my native region of Piemonte, ex-votos often take the form of small paintings depicting traumatic events—natural disasters, work accidents, injuries—alongside their resolution through divine intervention. Unlike official religious imagery, these artifacts were typically created by non-professional artists on improvised supports, placing the suffering subject at the center and relegating divine figures to the margins. They reflect a raw, intimate form of storytelling rooted in pain, gratitude, and survival.
The installation draws from this tradition while weaving in contemporary digital iconographies, such as self-hate memes and emotional disclosures on social media. By juxtaposing historical devotional aesthetics with digital expressions of vulnerability, the work explores how grace and disgrace are visualized across time, and how suffering becomes a site of symbolic and emotional investment.
Presented during the exhibition Rewriting the Future at Park, Tilburg and at Soup, Rotterdam.
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chance
Mixed media installation
2023
chance is a mixed media installation that takes the form of an almost-game, reflecting on themes of fate, fatality, and fatalism. The work is part of a broader research trajectory rooted in the Catholic tradition of ex-votos—votive artifacts created to thank a holy figure for intervening in moments of crisis.
In this piece, the symbolic logic of ex-votos is reinterpreted through the lens of contemporary existential uncertainty. The game structure plays with ideas of chance and agency, drawing parallels between religious fatalism and the pervasive sense of powerlessness in the face of environmental, economic, and political instability. The scenarios unfold in a continuous loop, presenting outcomes as emotional fluctuations rather than rational consequences—blurring the line between personal and collective experience.
Presented during Springboard Art Fair, Utrecht and at Soup, Rotterdam.
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Macht van wie!!
Game level
2022
Macht van wie!! is a game-based installation developed for the exhibition of the same name at MaMA, Rotterdam, exploring how video games can function as mirrors of society and tools for protest. The project responds to the increasing tension between civic demonstration and state control, particularly in the context of growing police violence and the erosion of public agency.
The work centers on the Woonopstand (Residential Revolt) protest that took place in Rotterdam on 17 October 2021. In collaboration with curator Sebastiaan Hoogstraten, I developed a new playable level within the game RIOT: Civil Unrest, originally created by Leonard Menchiari to simulate real-world protest scenarios. I created all the visual assets and game sprites specifically for this level, designing the environments and characters to reflect the urban context and emotional tone of the protest.
Macht van wie!! explores how digital environments can be used to simulate, document, and critique real-world political events. By embedding protest within a playable structure, the work invites reflection on the limits of control, the aesthetics of resistance, and the role of interactive media in shaping public discourse.
Mural work of Guido de Boer and pictures by Lotte Stekelenburg.
Special thanks to Leonard Menchiari, Actiecoalitie Woonopstand and the MaMA staff
Presented during the exhibition Power of who at MaMA, Rotterdam.
When you might go astray
Game
2021
whenyoumightgoastray.xyz
When you might go astray is a research project dealing with conspiracy theories, fictional narratives, and how their narrative patterns shape the stories of their believers. The research starts from the following questions: how much of the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories is generated by their compliance to certain narrative schemes? What happens when the legitimate need to generate counter-storytellings gets trapped in other kinds of narrative templates? When you might go astray deals with these questions by exploring the dangers of conspiracy theories and their entanglement with narrative schemes transforming their believers into heroes on a quest.
When you might go astray is divided into two parts: a game designed for the browser where the player is asked to undertake a journey, and an essay examining conspiratorial narratives through the lenses of the mono-myth. The game employs a fictional lens to ultimately unravel the links and sources to real events and anecdotes related to the conspiracy theories universe. In parallel with the theoretical inquiry, I conducted a research into gaming workframes, ending up crafting a game engine of its own, following the storytelling needs. This results in a combination of a game, interactive fiction, digital book and theoretical essay.
This project has been initiated in the context of the graduation research conducted during the Experimental Publishing Master course at Piet Zwart Institute.
Thanks to Aymeric Mansoux, Michael Murtaugh and Marloes de Valk.
Presented during the Graduation Show Blue Links at RIB Gallery, Rotterdam.
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Input Output: Tales from another module
December 2019
https://issue.xpub.nl/10
A project realized during a trimester at Piet Zwart Institute focused on sound, language, and interfaces. The objective of the publication was the creation of a common organism —a modular synthesizer. The outcome of the project is a publication containing a printed circuit board including all the modules produced by all the 10 participants and a booklet that acts as an operative and conceptual manual for each module.
My contribution consisted in the creation of a module, performing animations and phonetic translations when triggered by the user’s interactions and by inputs received by other modules. The module was the result of research into phonetic alphabets and human-machine translations.
The publication has been launched during an event hosted by Deplayer (Rotterdam) where the participants had the occasion to play and interact with the modules. The mudules have been displayed again in occasion of the exhibition 'Wrong Side Out' at Roodkapje (Rotterdam) in December 2020. The publication’s website is accessible here .
Project developed at in collaboration with Avital Barkai, Damlanur Bilgin, Sandra Golubjevaite, Tisa Neža Herlec, Mark van den Heuvel, Max Lehmann, Mika Motskobili, Clara Noseda and Ioana Tomici.
Thanks to Dennis de Bel, Andre Castro and Michael Murtaugh.