THE TIMELAPSE, LETIZIA LOPREIATO 

Online, February 8 – May 24 
Exhibition Location Here / Instagram Version Here

Where do we go when we experience trauma? How does time feel? Is it like wanting to wake up from a bad dream only to realize it wasn't ... A dream ... And that we weren't ... Awake ...?”

The Timelapse explores the experience of trauma and grief in the acceptance of the Letizia Lopreiato’s visual impairment over the past three years, and of the emotional healing as a cycle of completion  linked to the passing of her Dad. Lopreiato is a visual poet artist from Dublin, originally Italian, in her practice she works with the media of film photography and poetry. 

Lopreiato’s three-year documentary and biographical visual poetry art project is shot on 35mm film across several locations and in different countries including Spain, Italy and Ireland. The project worked as a healing journey through art, a form of handcrafted art therapy, leading Lopreiato to consider her visual impairment as an empowering force, almost a special power and her main source of strength and resilience. The different chapters of the The Timelapse, which Lopreiato chose to structure this project by, almost in the form of a digital visual poetry book, represent both herself and her mum, and their experience of loss following the passing of Lopreiato’s dad and the necessary relocation of Lopreiato’s mother to Ireland that finally reunited the family. 

Due to COVID-19 and the impossibility to host a physical show of her project as of now, Letizia chose to keep on working incessantly, to make sure that her project could anyways see the light during 2020. Lopreiato decided to leverage the forced call for stillness imposed by lockdown during the pandemic, to finalise this project and to dedicate its production to the topic of social inclusion and social justice, by focusing on an inclusive way of showcasing it. Lopreiato wants to allow the work to be accessed by anybody with a disability and/or in a vulnerable state in life, whether this might be at a temporary or at a permanent level.

With this in mind, Lopreiato has created an interactive and user-friendly experience of her work that fully focuses on the accessibility of its content in a digital form. This has been made possible by the inclusion of an audio-visual, bilingual (English and Italian) spoken word series, that accompanies her poetry and film photography to complement this project’s visual narrative. Lopreiato has just launched via her Instagram profile a release of The Timelapse images and poetry, via an inclusive and interactive audio-visual exhibition which expands on the dedicated website she created for it. 

Both via her Instagram profile and on this dedicated project’s website, the user is free to play and pause on the content by flicking though the images and text, at their own pace, just like if they were the pages of a book. It is Lopreiato’s choice to not incorporate an indication of where the user could find the audio-visual spoken word content in this digital display. The bilingual audio-visual spoken word is almost hidden among the frames, this with the aim of representing a story, which just like in Lopreiato’s real life experience, was only waiting to be slowly unveiled and narrated. The audience is this way guaranteed full control on how to process the messages of this visual narrative, both at an aesthetic as well as at an emotional level. 

About Lopreiato’s The Timelapse project:

Lopreiato’s three year documentary and biographical project recently was featured by Magnum Photos in the best practices section of their website. Lopreiato was selected among other 5 artists globally, following a review of her project with Magnum photographers last summer. 

Child Friendly 

EXHIBITION RELATED EVENT: LETIZIA LOPREIATO INSTAGRAM LIVE ARTIST TALK