In this project, we are presented with a profound meditation on absence and the spaces we yearn for but never quite inhabit. Mauro Martino’s Me-Me is born from a sense of nostalgia—a longing for a city he frequents but no longer calls home. "Milano, I am often in the city, but I don’t live there. My habits are taking root elsewhere."
This exploration invites us to reconsider the nature of presence and absence, to ask: why not be in all places, in all forms? Martino’s work contemplates the untaken paths, the lives that could have been. It’s an introspective zoom into potential selves—if only he had stayed, if only he hadn’t left—what could he have become?
Here unfolds a continuous narrative of possible destinies. The artist places himself at the center of an infinite web of what-ifs, as we witness a proliferation of potential futures, each one manifesting as another "me." Yet, this isn’t just a return to a physical place. Me-Me suggests that through art, one can be simultaneously absent and present: "At least during the exhibition, I am there with my friends, and even with those who might have been my friends had we ever met—because, in reality, I am not in Milan."
By weaving together memory, place, and multiplicity, Martino creates a poignant tableau of belonging and estrangement, a reminder that we are always negotiating between the spaces we inhabit and those we imagine.