Dario Li Gioi: an investigation into the Present
Interviews
More about the artist:
Website: darioligioi.org
Instagram: @darioligioi
Dario Li Gioi was born in Erice (Trapani). He has a degree in political science. He works as a freelance photographer based in Rome.
In his photography, he privelegies social and anthropological issues.
With this interview we want to shed light on some of his work and photographic practice.
Santolo Felaco
Dario, one of your first works is Gymnasium set in Rome in an occupied gymnasium. Your work is not a classic work on sport but focuses on the relationship between space, objects and place, the gymnasium as a place of transition and suspension. What led you to choose this interpretation?
Dario Li Gioi
The popular gym in San Lorenzo is a very small place, full of people and athletes. In the first photos, confusion reigned. I approached it thinking of telling the story of the world of boxing and martial arts. The space was dense, difficult to decode. My way of working is not studied at a table: I often have ideas, which I transform into storyboards, accompanied by personal notes, but I need to lose myself looking. I began to remove visual elements and go during the less crowded hours. I stripped down the idea of the gym that we have in our imagination, at which point sport as such took a back seat. I began to reflect on the relationship that human beings have with the space that surrounds them, also looking for a more contemporary visual narrative less tied to the aesthetics of photojournalism. A vision that, through an atmosphere or a single element in the frame, would push the viewer to reflect on how human beings rework space. The sporting gesture, the objects and the empty spaces are, therefore, nothing but the synthesis of this concept and the sporting gesture suspended in space becomes a political gesture.
Santolo Felaco:
In your work Sarabande, you tell the story of Sebastian, a clown and a street artist. The photos have a great aesthetic value and a strong poetic charge, as well as some references to masters of photography such as Koudelka. Can you tell us about this project and what the difficulties were in realising it.
Dario Li Gioi
Sarabande is the story of the personal redemption of a man, Sebastian. He fled Catania in the 80s to become an actor. The son of a patriarchal family that saw this choice as a sign of homosexuality, he traveled around Europe for a long time, he did a thousand jobs, until he was able to establish himself as a street artist. I met him in a Roma camp. Initially I had focused my attention on the life of that camp, when I met Sebastian I understood that he was my story. A man balanced between staying and leaving. It seemed interesting to me to follow a person who was more nomadic than the nomads and through him to tell two realities that moved in parallel, his story and that of the Roma in the difficult context of a ghetto camp. The vision of Koudelka and his gypsies was a reference, even if the one of his works that influenced me the most was Exiles.
The difficulty, as in all long-term works linked to a single person, is being able to become his shadow. For almost two years I invaded his privacy, I spent entire days with him without anything happening and others in which he did not stop for a moment. Yet that dead time was vital for the realization of this work because in the silences I found a way to enter into his emotional sphere.
Santolo Felaco:
Your work The Hidden Life of Animals, set in the biopark in Rome, offers the viewer the chance to investigate the dynamics that govern life in a zoo, what goes on behind the scenes and the human-animal relationship in a state of captivity. How did this project come about and what prompted you to make it?
Dario Li Gioi:
The Hidden Life of Animals is part of a large project investigating the relationship between humans and animals in contemporary society.
The project was born from reading an essay by John Berger, Why do we look at animals ? In which the English writer defines the zoo as a monument to the disappearance of animals. I asked myself if this is the ultimate future for the animals most at risk. Can the constant extinction of animal species be stopped by bioparks, as zoos are called today, or by other structures? Or do they risk being just a sort of backup of the animal world as an end in itself? Here too I sought a more documentary than photojournalistic aesthetic, which certainly puts the viewer more inside, but which does not tell the daily routine of a biopark. In the end I would like the viewer to ask himself if it is a non-place, a museum or a Noah’s Ark and above all why we look at animals, if for simple play, a sense of guilt or for a real desire to provide salvation.
The investigation will not stop here: I am also working on wildlife recovery centers.
[…] In the end I would like the viewer to ask himself if it is a non-place, a museum or a Noah’s Ark
Santolo Felaco:
For some time now, you have been closely following many street demonstrations taking place in Rome; your shots do not just focus on the event, but have a strong expressive charge. Tell us about this project and what are your goals?
Dario Li Gioi:
I started taking pictures in Palermo, during the mafia war in the 90s, I grew up looking at the photos of Letizia Battaglia and Franco Zecchin. From that period I have retained the desire to tell the news in its becoming shared historical memory. The square is the living body of democracy. Struggle – frammenti di lotta, would like to be a reflection on the fragmentation of the struggle.
The political, student, feminist movements, told by Tano D’Amico, Paola Agosti and other great photographers, in the 70s and early 80s, had strong fractures: 1977 closed the unitary ideological era and fell into the pessimism of nothing can change. Genoa 2001 violently pushed back the No global movement, leaving an open wound like a threat: we can do it again.
Today the struggles against an arrogant social and economic model often appear disordered and fragmented, but at the same time resistant. There are many groups that take to the streets, but they are often made up of just a few people. The strongest instance remains the feminist one. The work is still evolving, the photos focus on the body and face of those who take to the streets. The body in its emotional expressions as opposition to power. Even the choice to publish regularly on Instagram, as a sort of diary, is part of this project that aims, as mentioned, to leave a trace of memory.
Santolo Felaco:
What project are you working on now and what are the future ones?
Dario Li Gioi:
At the moment I am very focused on the work related to the movements. I would like to delve deeper into the part related to the ecological instance because I believe that it is an aspect that in the coming years could modify and influence other struggles. Maybe now it is a bit dormant. Other ideas are there but they are still in a nascent phase, noted down to then be evaluated in the field. In addition of course to carrying forward the Hidden Life of animals. I do not like working on short-term projects, I prefer to work slowly, usually 4-5 years.
