I Made Them Run Away

I Made Them Run Away is a multi-layered story weaving together family archive and photographs with texts written by the artist's mother. It brings together memories from the past and feelings of the present to explore the dynamics of affective relationships - the need for attention, the expectations that cause disillusionment, insecurity and judgment. Shifting between the different points of view, Zanin depicts the recurring complicated triangle relationship between she, her mother and the “man”, a not-constant multiple figure, mostly represented as an absence in the work.

Fantasizing about a man she was never able to have, the artist’s mother wrote her thoughts and desires to an imaginary man in a diary entitled Letters to a man I have never had. The poetical and wistful writing, clash with the torn family images, of which her mother has preserved only her figure, or the one of the daughter, tearing off all her ex-boyfriends, creating objects saturated with anger and loneliness. Every other picture is the reconstruction and expression of feelings and sensations that emerged from the past and became apparent in the present. The interplay of perspectives created a dialogue between mother and daughter in two different moments in time, reflecting on the role of the past, and exploring the coexistence and transition of opposite feelings within relationships, such as compassion and anger, attraction and repulsion, love and hate.