Silvia Rosi
Silvia Rosi treasures her experience as an electoral scrutineer and reflects with the Election Box series, on issues of migration and citizenship that concern her closely. Italy does not recognise ius soli and the children of migrants have to wait until their coming of age to request citizenship. Rosi builds her own cabin and plays with the mystery of disappearing into it. She ironically leaves the story of memories, recollections and dreams to the uncovered part, the lower part of the cabin.
Encounter is a fictional representation of Rosi’s family album, exploring tales of migration and diaspora through self-portraiture, performance and symbolism. Inspired by family archives, Rosi retraced her parents’ history in Togo and Italy.
Rosi performs her family narrative recreating both visual and oral histories through the combination of photography, text, and video in an attempt to regain memories that have been lost through migration. Encounter is a homage to the family album, an object in constant transformation.
Silvia Rosi graduated from the London College of Communication in 2016 with a BA in Photography. Her work retraces her personal family history drawing on her Togolese heritage, the idea of the origins. The theme of the family is explored through self-portraits in which she plays her mother and father, narrating their experience of migration from Togo to Italy. She usually works in the studio partially referring to the West African portrait tradition. *She was born in 1992, and lives and works between London and Modena.