FRANCESCO PENNACCHIO

u n l i k e f l o w e r s

Dad.

Will Mum come back with the spring, like flowers do?

To be bereaved as a child is a complex issue. It is not a loved one that is missed - as there is no memory of the mourned person. For most of my life, I have mourned and missed the character of the Mother, rather than the person Emanuela – who died of cancer when I was two.

After 30 years of silence, I finally opened the closet where I had confined her memory and absence.

Unlike flowers, she won't come back with the spring. I journey through the traces she left on Earth, intending to capture some fragments of the person she was, and I cannot remember. There is no narrative to be retrieved or unveiled. The author of the project is my two-year old self, who shared a little slice of time - 1044 days - with her. It is only through suggestions, and visual alliteration, that I try to bring fragments of her existence to the surface.

To illustrate this journey, I juxtapose the renovating natural world against the fragments of her life that have been captured on film. I choose polaroids as physical building blocks for the reconstruction of her memory. The prosperous family archive acts as their counterparts, in the attempt to find a meeting point between us - halfway - and ultimately demonstrate that Emanuela was and is more than the mere narrative that I have been given.