ULTIMO STATO
(2023-…)
Ultimo stato is a visual investigation into the slow disintegration of Venice — a city whose physical presence endures, yet whose vital essence has been progressively hollowed out. The project documents Venice’s transition from a lived space to an aestheticized surface — from a vibrant urban organism to an iconographic simulacrum.
This is not a nostalgic narrative, nor a celebration of decay. On the contrary, it adopts an analytical, almost clinical stance, observing Venice as a terminal urban body, a victim of an image-driven economy that consumes its identity and fossilizes its form. The city does not evolve: it remains suspended, immobilized in a fragile present, trapped in a temporal dimension that is no longer past nor future.
The deliberate absence of the human figure is no random void, but a critical statement. It marks the irreversible shift from inhabited city to uninhabited scenography, from place to image. The architectures — once instruments of collective life — now appear as aesthetic relics: structures without function, signs without meaning.
In this context, Venice emerges not as a unique case but as a global paradigm: an extreme model of the fate threatening many historic cities overwhelmed by market logics, mass tourism, and spectacle. Ultimo stato does not seek to assign blame to individuals; rather, it questions the system itself: What are the social and spatial consequences of transforming cities into visual commodities? What happens when architecture ceases to serve life and serves only the gaze?
The work invites the viewer to reflect on an urban condition that is no longer sustainable, where permanence is no longer a guarantee, but a mask. In this irreversible suspension, one perceives a Venice that no longer speaks — yet still, silently, watches us.