Presenting my new exhibition Ten Years at Palazzo Bembo in Venice, running from April 20 to November 24, 2024 (photos by Malvina Battiston, Matteo Losurdo and Federico Vespignani)

Ten Years is a celebration of Sandra Cattaneo Adorno’s decade of photography, which started when the artist turned sixty years old. Guided by a profound sense of curiosity, Cattaneo Adorno pairs insight and playfulness to reflect on perception and personal memories in the images of the show, curated by the photographer herself and Andrea Verganti. The opening projection investigates the photographer’s experience of living in different countries, as pictures of people taken in various locations disintegrate and melt into one another in a continuous circle. The same idea of fluidity and movement is conveyed by the accordion-shaped book Ten Years, which increasingly transposes the viewer to a dimension of magic through the use of golden metallic ink.

Reflected also in the photographs on the wall, this innovative technique evokes Cattaneo Adorno’s memories of carnival dancers in her native city of Rio de Janeiro, whose bodies covered in golden paint exude the beauty and joy of life. By inverting some of the images of the project to make them look like photographic negatives, the artist offers another perspective on reality, as hidden details come to light and the viewers are invited to question what they are seeing. At the end of the room, an image of Ipanema Beach printed on the curtains overlays the Grand Canal, while the sound of waves meets the visitors and immerses them completely in the photographer’s journey.