Giulia Parlato

Photographer

Giulia Parlato (b.1993) is an Italian artist based in London. Her practice focuses on staged photography and revolves around history, myths, and object-hood. She is fascinated by the historical use of photography as a document of truth, specifically in its scientific and forensic uses. Her work attempts to challenge that language, by creating a new space in which fake histories take place. Looking at the fragility of historiography and at the idea of failed encounters, her practice undertakes an exhaustive journey into these notions in trying to understand which objects and spaces men usually use to search something that in reality can never be found. This melancholic and frustrating state, caused by men's impossibility to know the past, is what fascinates her, and it constitutes the foundation of her work. Furthermore, she is interested in semiology and how symbols define a region's identity, social dynamics and beliefs. She applies a comparative methodology to her way of working and she engages with different institutions and professionals such as different archives, museums, universities, archaeologists, theorists and anything that can enrich her historical understanding of things and bring a different point of view into the work. Her work is influenced by the Arab-Norman Sicilian heritage and aesthetics and Aby Warburg’s studies on the history of art. These have contributed to her own development and understanding of her own need to re-elaborate the historical and mythological into a contemporary language. Giulia graduated in photography from the London College of Communication in 2016 and from the MA at the Royal College of Arts in 2019.