Cristiano Di Martino

I'm interested in the themes related to the human condition. The awareness of our mortal existence and the consequent fear of dying. Growing up in Naples, I gathered strong memories of crucifixes, shrines, depictions of violent deaths in religious imagery, and the fear of Vesuvius. These were an ever-present reminder of our limited time on earth, of the human desire to overcome and transcend our fate by creating order, rituals, and symbols to give our lives significance. In my work, the natural world of plants, animals, and insects synchronises with bodily forms, becoming a single symbiotic entity or system, underlining the similarities between our body and the environment from which we find ourselves increasingly detached.

I’m drawn to the history of this space and its long-lived past life as a butcher shop. Butcheries have something grotesque within them. The mental association between the animals’ carcasses and my own insides and flesh, and what it means to eat it, it’s immediate.

It made me reflect upon the indifference with which we butcher animals. Our ability to care for them and then to kill them.