Sotterrata is a poetic and subversive gesture upon archive footage from Fascist Italy, which explores the profound tension between the gaze and domination. The work destabilizes the colonial scopic regime by denying the cannibalistic impulse of the Western gaze: the historical voyeurism that exposes, objectifies and consumes the ‘other’ is abruptly cut short by the artist’s gesture of covering the images with small pebbles.

By imposing a mineral materiality upon the visual surface, a reverse archaeology is enacted. Given the radical impossibility of seeing, the pretense of knowing is shattered and, consequently, the mechanism of domination is neutralized. The stones act as a mantle of opacity and resistance, a territory where the earth silences the predatory gaze and restores to the images their sovereign right to secrecy.

Work carried out at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome.