GIULIA PARLATO: DIACHRONICLES
GIULIA PARLATO: DIACHRONICLES
CREDITS
Giulia Parlato (b.1993, Italy) is an artist based in London and Palermo. She focuses on staged photography connected to themes of history, myths and object-hood. In her work, she examines and challenges the medium’s preconceived ability to document truth, especially in the scientific and forensic environment – as becomes apparent in her ongoing series ‘Diachronicles’.
The work addresses the leading role archaeology and the museum space play in a historical narrative. Parlato creates her own and explores a parallel history where non-existent artefacts and forgeries are assumed to be hidden in museum basements. What we are witnessing are artefacts and dioramas that appear to be the truthful representations of human history due to the images’ neutral and objective outlook. However, as Parlato reveals, all captured objects are forgeries, uncategorised materials or they are simply created by the artist herself.
‘Diachronicles’ blurs the boundary between truth and fiction. The concepts overlap and point to the impossible search for academic legitimation. Parlato regards historical space as a fictional container, a collection of evidences giving way to the fantastic. According to her, the attempts to know and hence, reconstruct the past fall into chimerical gaps where things are created, used, moved, buried and excavated. She presents the history in a nomadic and fragmentary way where movement, transfiguration, and misinterpretation of objects shape historiography and ultimately, the real.
