Alessandra D’Urso was displayed throughout Arles to promote the exhibition of her work on the place Patrat. A few hours before packing off , she tells us about her project.
“The Impertinence of the Impermanence”
” Vanitas have been a constant source of inspiration for artists, they’ve always fascinated me. I shot the first picture last year, its a work in progress, I’m constantly searching for other elements to include. The butterfly is a vanitas classic, and I used it despite my personal phobia. It’s a question of aesthetics and meaning, the butterfly is the perfect image of lightness and what is not permanent, which I call” impermanence”.
Why regret the past when it’s gone? Why worry about a future which doesn’t exist yet ? This is not real, and that’s precisely is the concept of impermanence, we are all impermanent; Once you figured that out, you are free, you can actually start living. Shooting vanitas is coming to grips with this idea, and trying to share it with others.
The skull is not a rock and roll statement, it comes from meditation. When you meditate, you are in the present, you get to seize your thought, to be aware of the present. “To be or not to be”: if you accept death, you can exist, while if you don’t, you’re forever a slave, trying to stop time, to resist the inevitable. ” Memento mori “:” remember you are mortal”, be aware of the here and now. We will all, eventually, go back to dust. This resets our conception of real and unreal.”
Alessandra d’Urso
