Memorabilia — Installation (Italy, 2022)

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Commissioned installation presented for the first time during Milan Design Week 2022 at the group exhibition Urban Matter(s) — Material Reduction for a Lighter City, curated by Materially for Circularity and Haiki+, at Superstudio, Via Tortona, Milan.

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Memorabilia (from the Latin memorabilis, “worthy of being remembered”) reflects on the tension between memory and material presence; on how objects, gestures, and even air can become vessels of remembrance.
The work consists of a slender vertical structure in metal and wood, partially gilded, supporting a cluster of blue latex balloons.

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Conceived in the aftermath of the pandemic, during the first Salone del Mobile held in its wake, Memorabilia reconsiders the act of breathing itself — once taken for granted, now charged with collective awareness and vulnerability.
Visitors were invited to inflate a balloon and leave it suspended within the installation, as both signature and offering: an ephemeral record of presence, inscribed in air.

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Each balloon, fragile and translucent, becomes a memory capsule — holding the breath of another, a trace of shared existence. Together, they form a suspended archive of gestures, a constellation of fleeting presences that merge the individual and the collective.

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The installation draws on the etymology of “memorabilia” — things worth remembering — and extends it beyond the tangible. Here, remembrance is not a static relic but a living, breathing act: the transformation of the invisible (air, breath, gesture) into form.

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As Paul Auster suggests, stories and memories only take shape through the imagination of the viewer. Likewise, Memorabilia invites participation as a co-creative process: each contribution alters the work, expanding its meaning through presence.

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In its lightness, fragility, and golden accents, Memorabilia becomes a quiet monument to the air we share — a reminder that to remember is, first of all, to breathe.

 

Metal, wood, gold paint, latex balloons — 40 × 40 × 120 cm