Se potessi essere Farfalla

Se potessi essere Farfalla (Ha Pillangó lehetnék) is a project created with the intention of filling a void I feel towards my family, caused by an unwanted physical and emotional distance.

Growing up with a family divided between two countries, Italy and Hungary, which are so different from a cultural point of view, caused me great confusion about my familiar and cultural identity, and about the expectations I thought I had of them. So I began to observe from a distance the spaces we share and their daily lives to find answers to my questions.

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Once a year, since I was born, I spend a week visiting my family in Újpest, Hungary. Like the stereotype of the butterfly’s life, according to which it spends only one week in its new form , I spend only one week a year in my second identity, observing the places and people I feel most connected to, but at the same time experiencing it with great detachment.

They are my mother’s family.

I started photographing them a long time ago, without really worrying about why. After a few years, I began to ask myself the same questions over and over again:

Who are they the rest of the year? What do they know about me? What are my origins? Who are these strangers? Am I the foreigner?

Questions I still ask myself, especially now that I’m an adult.

In recent years, I have begun to analyze all the photographic material produced over sixteen years, and I have realized that despite the persistent gap between me and my family, my need to find definitive answers can never be satisfied.

Thanks to photography, I have learned to temporarily fill this “space” of which I sometimes feel an integral part, but more often feel out of place.

Photography is my language of love towards them.