Even the Night Has a Heart by Valentina Fusco

Even the Night Has a Heart investigates the trauma Valentina Fusco inherited from her mother's life experiences, marked by the violence exerted by patriarchal family ties. The work is composed of multiple parts, combining the reworking of family photographs with the performative use of the photographer’s body, re-signifying it from the weight of the inheritance. The work particularly focuses on traumas that, although shrouded in silence, shape emotional and identity dimensions. This research is rooted in Fusco’s personal experience, shaped by living with a violent mother suffering from a personality disorder. This complex matrilineal inheritance, in which the women of her family have endured profound and often unheard pain, led her to understand how ‘pain, often denied or hidden by a patriarchal society, can leave deep scars. These women, in turn, internalised and made patriarchal violence their own, unconsciously perpetuating it and thus fuelling the mandate of masculinity, which I aim to dismantle.’