Sons of the Sun


2021 - ongoing

Photographed between Turkey and Europe, Sons of the Sun is an ongoing collaborative project that aims to provide young Syrians with a space to frame their narratives and reclaim their stories, life experiences and identities. By adopting an intimate and subjective approach, the project strives to explore the process of coming of age in the context of forced migration and displacement, while also inviting us to reflect on the ways memory informs the construction and maintenance of identities and shapes our understanding of space, and is also shaped by time and place. It draws together the experiences of the youth in Turkey and the one who have left for countries such as Canada and Italy, among others, to promote cross-cultural understanding and to become a testimony for the future generations, the diaspora, and the Syrian population at large.


For more information,
contact carolacappellari.hello@gmail.com




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Dressmaker (2022 - ongoing ) 


archival images, text, photographs







Dressmaker is the result of a life time conversation between my mother and I, an attempt to put order to years of disconnected dialogue, scattered words and overlooked silences. It is an opportunity to explore the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship, to find the truth behind those words always heard and very little understood. An attempt to see the subject of my mother isolated from the context of motherhood, to know the girl who became a mother at the age in which I am now, an age in which I inevitably begin to wonder if I want or not in turn become a mother. 









Familia
from latin
familia (household)






Familia explores the meaning of family in a migratory context, in particular the one relating to London, where I have been living for more than five years.

With the increasing rental cost of houses in London, situations where unrelated people share the same house or families rent part of their homes to strangers have become more and more common. These coexistences create new dynamics, where intimacy and trust are built day by day, the concept of privacy is revisited and the whole idea of coexistence is discussed.

While the series initially questioned how the city changes the traditional family pattern in relation to different households, it slowly took on a more personal connotation, becoming an occasion for me to reflect on my relationship with the Rule family, with whom I have lived for more than a year, and on the meaning that similar realities can assume in the search for a sense of belonging to new places.

Alternating fiction and reality, I tried to portray and understand that new reality of which I had become part, an 'artificial family', halfway between a cohabitation of strangers and a traditional family coexistence. The process has inevitably left space for a personal reflection on the detachment I experienced from my family back home in Italy and, more generally, on the different possibilities of intending a family.

2020











Almost Blue


2019








Although feelings of anxiety are normal everyday occurrences, continuous and overwhelming worry can turn into chronic and disabling anxiety. Deeply misunderstood, talking about the condition is made difficult by the widespread consideration of anxiety as something that can be easily overcome, an attitude that can lead individuals to hide their feelings and avoid seeking help.

At a time when universities worldwide are reporting an increasing number of students experiencing anxiety disorders, Almost Blue draws on personal experience and psychological findings to prompt conversation on our society's lack of understanding of the condition, while also emphasising the possibility of psychological resilience.

Resilience is often assumed to be an innate trait that only certain individuals possess. Recent studies however have demonstrated how this ability can be learned and improved throughout our life in all the areas in which it manifests: the personal, the relationships, and the community.

With this series, I draw on cognitive therapy techniques to metaphorically reconstruct a personal path of recovery.
I re-enact dynamics of everyday life and personal relationships, to eventually prompt viewers to share their own stories of mental health, resonating with the theories that describe hearing inspiring stories of others as a key strategy to build resilience.














Installation view

Portrait of Our Times - A Collection of Modern Realities

Gower St. Gallery, London, UK

January - February 2020




Installation view

United in Lights, Wren Gallery

Wimbledon Park, London, UK

December 2022

Self 
portraits


2014 - 2020














© 2023 Carola Cappellari
carolacappellari.hello@gmail.com   
+39 3517180995