Exhibition: Alessandro Imbriaco – The Garden

Opening: 13.05.2014 7 pm
Introduction: Nicolò Degiorgis
Alessandro Imbriaco will be present.
Exhibition: 14.05. – 14.06.2014

For about five years, I have been documenting the housing problems of the city of Rome in my photographic work; this has led me to explore the fringe zones and hidden places within the city’s urbanised territory ever more extensively. Given their peripheral nature, these places have arisen in immediate proximity to building speculation properties and constitute quasi self-sufficient survival strongholds.

“The Garden” is one of these areas. It’s a swamp beside the Aniene river that is situated below a highly frequented road bridge on the eastern periphery of Rome. Various attempts to place the wetlands under protection to preserve its particular fauna failed. Completely abandoned, it now shelters new forms of life: Angela, a six-year old girl was born and grew up here. With her parents, Piero from Sicily and Luba from Russia, she lives in a hidden shanty under the flyover.

“The Garden” tells of the places and the atmosphere in which the girl has lived until the present day and also of the transformed function of this area, no longer harbouring only pheasants and moorhens but also people who have found a safe haven at this moor, as well as an alternative form of life that is almost inconceivable for those who cross the bridge daily by car.
Alessandro Imbriaco