Alba Zari
Three multiple portraits, each consisting of 5 colour images, aligned in sequence. The subjects, of the sequence, in the first portrait Alba Zari, the author, in the second the putative father, in the third the father’s avatar (created with the “Make a Human” programme) are taken from each side as if for a sketch. These sequences are at the heart of The Y – Research of biological father (2017), a multimedia project dedicated by Alba Zari to the search for the father she never knew.
This image is at the heart of The Y – Research of biological father (2017), a multimedia project dedicated by Alba Zari to the search for the father she never knew. Using the “Make a Human” programme the artist tries to detect which traits she inherited from the unknown father. To do so Zari scans her self-portrait and then proceeds to exclude the features she inherited from her mother. What is left is the features she inherited from the father.
ALBA ZARI’s medium is photography but she is also a movie director and documentary film maker. Her experience as a traveler influences and is reflected in her photographic practice, which intends to explore social themes, for example her visual studies of mental health centres since the Italian Basaglia Law, and the widespread eating disorders in American society. She has also completed projects on scenes from daily life in urban landscapes. She regularly collaborates with fashion brands and newspapers. Her style is distinguished by the use of the material colour, very pictorial, and by her images featuring unresolved, melancholic environments. Zari has an introspective sensibility for photography. The Y – Research of Biological Father (2017) is born out of a journey in search of her origins through the father she never knew. *She was born in Bangkok in 1987, and lives and works between Italy and London.