Giaime Meloni

Racines

residency in collaboration with Photaumnales (France)

Location: Palazzo Guinigi, Via Guinigi, 29

Opening days and hours:
Monday – Thursday from 15:00 to 19:00
Friday – Sunday from 10:00 to 19:00

Racines’ stems from a desire to explore the roots of the olive tree, both literally and symbolically, considering this tree as a common cultural matrix of the Mediterranean. With this project I want to reflect on my origins and how the Mediterranean has always been characterised by migratory flows of people, animals, goods and plants etc. In 2023, I started photographing ‘S’Ortu Mannu’, a thousand-year-old olive grove near my mother’s house in Sardinia. I was immediately fascinated by the imposing trunks, resembling anonymous sculptures, each with its own identity. I started by making a portrait of each tree taxonomically, but the further I went, the more interested I became in what the knots and intricate ramifications represented. These olive trees tell a story dating back to the period of the Pisan protectorate in the 11th century, when they were grafted to make them productive. Through this anecdote of the past, I wanted to create a contemporary symbolic bridge between Sardinia and Tuscany, uniting images of two territories from one side of the Tyrrhenian Sea to the other. The project images show the similarities and constants of the Mediterranean, highlighting the common features between the two shores. The topographical data of where each picture was taken is no longer important, because the intention is to merge the perception of these two places. At the same time, as a photographer, it is important for me to show the roots as images. Even if they are almost impossible to photograph, they are part of the visual research of the project. During my residency in Lucca, I visited the Giardino dei Semplici in Florence, where I found archive images in some botanical books about olive trees. These photos, documents of study and abstract works at the same time, stimulated my curiosity. I rephotographed them and integrated them into the project, offering a new perspective on these vital organs of plants. In this way, “Racines” pays homage to the natural beauty of these plants, but at the same time also reflects on the interconnection between cultures and the importance of understanding one’s roots.

BIOGRAPHY
Giaime Meloni is a photographer with a PhD in architecture who lives between two islands: Île-de-France and Sardinia. His work lies on the border between the real and the imaginary, using photography to interrogate our relationship with our surroundings. In 2017, he was a finalist in the Graziadei Prize with the project Das Unheimliche. In 2019 he was selected by Camera Centro Italiano per la Fotografia to participate in the Futures for Photography programme supported by the European Commission, and in the same year he was a finalist of the Francesco Fabbri Prize for Contemporary Photography with the project Columns of Cultures.
Since 2022, he has been an associate professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de la Ville et du Territoire de Paris Est, where he teaches forms of representation of contemporary landscapes.