The project by artist Silvia Mariotti investigates an extraordinary natural phenomenon characterized by a strong historical connotation – the artist has in fact chosen to photograph vertical caves, chasms, large sinkholes in Istria and Karst known as foibe. These sinkholes are a controversial subject, both in the public debate and in the personal exhibition of Silvia Mariotti in which sublime notions of nature intertwine with historical thought.

Photographs, videos, sculptures and sound installations convey the visitor a double sublime horror: the magnificence of the depicted nature that touches our perception, but also intends to convey historical implications. The title is a reference to memory, to the process of remembering, to casting light on a nocturnal subject through artistic research – Dawn is in fact the dawning that gradually leads to light.

In recent decades, the foibe have become a symbol of  history of Italy and Istria. For the collective imagination, these caves, like Pandora’s box, seem to contain all the evils of the twentieth century. They have become the catalyst of ethnic hatred, of war crimes against the Italians and the local population, of experience of exile and of a great trauma of the nation that originated in the period between the two world wars.

Illustrious predecessors have attempted similar endeavours – in 1861, Felix Nadar was the first that took a camera into the underground of Paris, beating his colleagues in the initiative to take photographs in the sewerage and catacombs of a major metropolis. It was then that for the first time the lens was attributed with the ability to make discoveries and the art of photography was born – the photographic and sculptural project of Silvia Mariotti is just like the enterprise of Nadar – a sublime discovery.

Also visit: Villa Manin di Passariano

The exhibition was made in collaboration with IoDeposito