The stranger in me is : MY STRENGTH
This work shows us the intangible strength that exists in a world full of uprising and fragility.
I use documentary photography and other available mediums to unravel human stories and interpret them to defy the existential norms created by society. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, my passion for my community has led me to the role of assistant creative director at Kuta Arts Foundation. My work has been exhibited at the 13th edition of the Lagos Photo Festival by the African Artist Foundation. I have also participated in the Lagos Photojournalism Festival workshop by the Institut Français de Lagos.
The stranger in me is : MULTIFACETED
My reversed notebook has two sides: the front represents my openness to the world and my public life, with all its facets portrayed by the reflective material. The back is my private polyhedric soul: complicated, chaotic, ill, colourful. The blank spaces show forced
medicines abuse, but there is always one for emergencies. The pages, that we can’t read,
have poems and writings, from my past notebooks about love, life, struggles, words that have stained and swollen the pagesas they dripped under the water.
Errant and polyhedric soul, I was born in Aosta, Italy, in 1998.
Curiosity, determination and love guide me. Always against social injustice, as a victim of bullying and then as a woman, chronically ill, queer, neurodivergent person. Activist and politician, I always try to improve the small part of the world around me. I love to communicate, stay informed and to inform. Whether through photography, singing, writing, performance art, or anything I have the opportunity to experiment with, creating art always has allowed me to show my point of view and to express at the best my emotions.
The stranger in me is : THE ABYSS
I recreated the composition of eyes that appears when I gaze into the abyss and the abyss
gazes back at me. It’s a kaleidoscope of memories and possibilities where I find my fears and dark sides. I can’t hold my gaze and I look away. I cover it with wax, sealing every fracture. I distract myself and pretend it doesn’t exist, but it’s there. How do I unveil my eyes and confront the abyss with honesty and clarity? How do I hold the gaze of Life?
Sometimes I’m fragmented and unstable. Sometimes I’m too confident. I don’t know who I am. I should chill out. I’m only a human being.
The stranger in me is : TIMING
Standing-out:
a) project from a surface;
b) persist in opposition or support of something;
c) to be easily seen or noticed.
Out-standing:
a) clearly very much better than what is usual;
b) not yet done, solved or paid.
Excellent, but out of place.
Persistent but unsolved.
Caught up in the middle of too soon and too late, too old and too young, in the middle of leaning toward the future, devouring the present and looking back to the past.
I add pages that occupy spaces that are not supposed to be theirs, to write and read stories
that are still untold, out of a standard that exists only in our heads. Let the future happen.
I am an inter-reader, I like simple things and making plans that hardly work out the way I planned. I love wine at the end of the day and enjoy being the dumbest in the room.
The stranger in me is : MYSELF
From an early age, people try to define us and to fit us into certain roles: so what is a notebook? Who is the stranger? What are we? Who am I? They tear us apart, write on us, order us. Maybe at the end it’s okay not to be okay, it’s okay to burst, it’s okay not to be a notebook. Because everything is possible but so is nothing. And you know what? People call me in many ways, but you can simply call me “Alchemy”.
I’m an Italian-Peruvian person who loves working as an intercultural mediator and in the non-profit field in different ways. I’m crazy for books, music and dance. I’m not so good at describing myself, so I just see me as “something somehow in transformation”.
