Even When I’m Not Here
“Even When I’m Not Here” is Chiara Ventura’s solo show for THEPÒSITO Art Space. The artist’s work explores the complex themes of interpersonal relationships, language and emotional expression, with a particular focus on contradictory exchange mechanisms between individuals. The exhibition invites us to reflect on what happens when communication is made difficult or impossible, when words fail or are censored and when reciprocity between bodies becomes a physical game of empties and fullness.
The work that gives the exhibition its title is “Even when I’m not here” (2024), a photograph that immortalizes the artist’s companion on the bed at the end of sexual intercourse, placed inside a blue bag. In the photo, the blankets, are absurdly forming a wave (for shape and color), becoming symbol of an inner sea and a shared flow. The photo is placed in a water bag, a container that normally houses vital liquids, such as water, but which in this case has been emptied. In the absence, the visual ‘sea’ of the photo takes over, evoking a contrast between the lack of a real flow and the symbolic presence of an emotional wave. On the bag are written the words EVEN WHEN I’M NOT HERE, a message that recalls the feeling of presence despite the physical absence. This work is the result of a moment from the performance ‘Apnea’, presented for the first time at Villa Rondinelli (Fiesole) in November 2023. During the action the artist uses the drinking bag, in a gesture suspended between caring herself – the bag evokes a vial – and autoerotism, because it is carried between the performer’s legs, while she looks at her partner’s photo. The gesture becomes a metaphor for the way in which relationships are nourished by a delicate balance between vulnerability and power, between distance and proximity. During the performance the sentence would be concluded by the words TRUST ME, written on another bag instead full; for the exhibition, the work does not present itself as double, and the narration is therefore left incomplete, reduced to one element that mentions ‘even when I am not here’. This choice invites the viewer to reflect and complete the sentence in a personal way, emphasizing the idea that trust is a preconceived condition in relationships. The act of trusting becomes a powerful subtext, an unsaid that connects individuals even in absence, and that puts emotional communication beyond explicit words and gestures.
“Even When I’m Not Here” is, therefore, an artistic research that questions the boundary between absence and presence, between what is said and the unspoken, offering a perspective on how new generations are confronted with the inability and the difficulty of telling and sharing themselves everything. It presents a complex and stratified reflection on the dynamics of human bonds, highlighting how communication, instead of facilitating the encounter between people, can often become an obstacle. The exhibition becomes an analysis of how the last generations live and interpret relationships in an age where media overabundance does not correspond to greater clarity or depth of exchange. In a hyper-connected world, where digital language accelerates and fragments human contact, words risk becoming slippery surfaces, distant from the emotional truth they intend to express. Ventura is confronted with the difficulty of finding a balance between saying and not saying, between intention and message reception, in a generation that often experiences the tension between the need to connect and the fear of being misunderstood or misinterpreted. In her works, the awareness emerges that authentic expression, whether verbal, bodily or visual, is subject to barriers, misunderstandings and silences. Interpersonal relationships thus become an uncertain space, where language itself, instead of being a tool for clarity, can turn into an ambiguous weapon, a mask behind which to hide deeper emotions.
