In my last post I would like to present the work “Holobionts” by one of my favorite artists, Matteo Visentin.

Matteo Visentin (b. 1988 in Treviso, Italy) studied Visual Art at IUAV in Venice and graduated in 2023 in Photography at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig in Germany. His work investigates the concept of performativity of gestures, bodies and images and asks questions about existential issues such as belonging, identity and reality. The latter in particular is formalised in research on the medium employed for the realisation of each work which, in the case of photography, translates into images that reflect on their status as images and their relationship to both the reality they represent as well as the one they present.

“Holobionts” is a group of portraits in every of which two people are depicted as if they were one. The way subjects are portrayed aims to emphasize the relational nature of their being, which is the output of a process of constant interconnections and synergetic cooperations among all their constituting parts. The point of view, from which the subject is seen by the camera, is offered as a sort of mental paradigm to perceive and approach the otherness through.

Note from the artist: “Holobiont” is a term used in biology to describe an organism made of simpler forms of other organisms that co-exist symbiotically and whose interactions and collaborations allow the whole structure to function and survive, like ecosystems.