Damien Cifelli
My work explores a fictitious land of my own creation named Tarogramma; a hidden world that explorers have long been searching for in vain. Referencing the scale and compositions of history paintings and historical sculpture, I build a detailed culture; with its own aesthetic, way of living, and understanding of the world. One that is at once alien, and eerily similar to our own. I use fictional anthropology, through storytelling, to examine the idea of searching - the impulse we all feel to look beyond what we know. Do we, by virtue of looking for an alternative, critique the present? And by creating a fictional world, can we hold up a mirror to ourselves? Inspired by personal histories, the creativity of the diaspora, ancestral stories and recent collective experiences, I have created a world distilled down into the simplest necessities - human connection and a sense of community. Values that have become infinitely more important in recent times. Tarogramma is a vessel for all these ideas.
