Rachele Maistrello

For Rachele Maistrello, photography represents a sort of imaginative documentation, the possibility of giving shape to events that have been removed or have not yet happened. The work in competition, Fen Lin's Protocol, is the latest chapter in a visual research project dedicated to Fen Lin, a Chinese psychologist involved in a secret experiment on the intergenerational transmission of trauma. At the heart of the project is the Symbolic Sensory Cave: a controlled space in which sounds, smells and tactile stimuli attempt to reactivate deep memories stored in the body. The two photographs on display – raw, frontal, illuminated by flash – seem to be taken from that imaginary archive: in one, an office is haunted by a snake floating on a chair; in the other, a cave thick with rock formations evokes the interior of a body, a glimpse of deep consciousness. Completing the diptych is a selection of original documents attributed to Fen Lin – consent forms, internal regulations and diary entries. A graduate of IUAV who went on to specialise in Paris and Zurich, Maistrello thus blends neuroscience and speculation, constructing a narrative in which each image becomes a sensitive gateway: a secret access to the unsaid, the unremembered, to what lives and persists in us like a silent echo.

Giulia Oglialoro