EMOTIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Where does the individual end and the world begin?
Italian multimedia artist Giulia Aim works across painting, sculpture, and installation, moving between found objects, reclaimed materials, and elements constructed by hand. Her ongoing research, Emotional Archaeology, looks at the subtle processes through which the external world becomes part of our inner one.
Memory does not form in isolation. It is continually shaped by the images we encounter, the places we inhabit, the objects we handle, and the cultural codes that surround us. Some remain vivid, while others settle almost unnoticed into the background of perception. Giulia Aim is interested precisely in these less visible forms of accumulation, and in the traces they leave behind.
COLLECTING AS A FORM OF ATTENTION
This process has a physical counterpart in the artist’s instinct to collect. Objects and fragments are gathered from streets, journeys, encounters, and ordinary situations, often without an immediate purpose. Some remain in her possession for years before unexpectedly finding their place within a work.
The collection becomes more than a repository of materials. It records moments of attention and attraction whose significance may only become apparent later. In this sense, the studio operates much like memory itself: fragments accumulate without a predetermined hierarchy, waiting for new associations to emerge.
MAKING THE FAMILIAR STRANGE
Once inside the work, objects rarely retain their original function. Aim fragments, reconstructs, and combines them with painted and sculpted elements, creating relationships between things that would not ordinarily belong together. Recognition remains important. The object is still familiar, but the certainty surrounding it has been disturbed.
This displacement exposes another layer of the research. Familiar things carry more than their practical function. They hold habits, memories, and cultural meanings that can feel personal even when they have been produced collectively. By altering their context, Aim makes these associations available for reconsideration.
Colour, humour, and absurdity prevent this process from becoming didactic. Attraction and unease often coexist, allowing meaning to remain unstable rather than resolving into a single interpretation.
The archaeology suggested by the title is therefore not concerned with recovering a distant past. It is directed towards what is already present but difficult to see: the accumulated traces through which experience, culture, and memory become entangled.
Emotional Archaeology asks us to reconsider the apparent neutrality of the familiar, revealing how much can remain hidden inside what we think we already know.