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David Sarappa
b. 1996 / Vicenza, ITALY
Scorpio Sun, Scorpio Moon, Capricorn Rising
lives and works in Toronto | ON
Scorpio Sun, Scorpio Moon, Capricorn Rising
lives and works in Toronto | ON
I graduated in 2021 in Creativity and Communication Design, with a thesis entitled Profumo di Casa | Scent of Home, in which I first used photography as a medium of artistic expression and self-inquiry.
Diagnosed with dyslexia as a teenager and due to my imposing physical form, I began to confront my diversity both within my family and in the wider society, steeped in the conservative culture of north-eastern Italy.
My artistic practice is the terrain in which I am able to navigate and revisit the stages of a life characterised by the challenges and rejections one is forced to face by not fitting into the norm of structures that exclude fragility.
My story is similar to that of many other people: many of us do not live within war scenarios or suffer the traumas of what is defined as violence, but oppressive factors can be subtly hidden even in what seems to be a peaceful home, school or social environment.
Photography for me is the tool through which I can relate to what has always been difficult to look at, and a language through which I can make my voice heard, to myself and to others.
The images are a stream of consciousness in which I traverse the non-linearity of the everyday, and the words, which often invade the space of the images in my work, are exploration and catharsis of emotions, they are my battle to compose my identity and find my own space.
Art is therefore an exercise in restoring an underlying justice: that in which diversity becomes, for me and for others in my condition, a path to a new form of belonging, a strategy of encounter.
