To meet the unknown, or, at least, to get closer to it.

The story originates from the idea of emphasising an image of Lago by deconstructing the stereotypical dimension that is often associated with it, focussing instead on the concept of non-belonging to a place. Could it be that, beyond its idyllic appearance, concealed by a glossy, romanticised image, the lake might disclose an entirely different identity – a rather eerie one?

X unravels and faces the physical and relational

dimensions of a small community, thus rendering a truer version of it, drawn by contrast, blurred narrations, lights and shades. The lake that mirrors the town of Lago – a thousand inhabitants in the midst of the Venetian countryside – acts simultaneously as a background and a subject, a counterpart and a companion to Doriano, the protagonist, as he tells his own story.

The ‘x’s stand for Doriano’s juvenile love affairs,

fleetingly met by the lake shore, but they also stand for his will of not belonging, in all its meanings.

X by Daniele Costa – 16’28’’ – Italy 2020

Doriano was born and raised in Lago, on a hill overlooking the town’s cemetery: the province is a stage, onto which alienation and undisclosed identities, tradition and discontinuity alternate and merge into a complex blend.

The sequins of the clothes he often makes, shining in the dark by the lake’s deserted shore, are a tactile, crinkly material that turns into something other than itself: an imaginary armour that allows Doriano to tell his own story,

in a space that is at once shelter and freedom of expression. 

Doriano’s performativity in his own environment – feeling like a stranger within his own community whilst, at the same time, inextricably tied to his origins – is accomplished in a visionary finale, in which the character that emerges becomes the best interpret of his own life.

Daniele Costa (Castelfranco Veneto, 1992). He begins his artistic practice in 2014 focusing mainly on video. In 2015 he graduates at the University of Padua obtaining a first level degree in Disciplines of the Arts, Music and Performing Arts, then he completes his studies at the master degree course in Visual Arts at the Iuav University of Venice.

His research focuses on the knowledge of the human body in two directions of personal introspection. On the one hand the internal functioning of the human body, based on medical-scientific insights, on the other the human singularity, the knowledge of the individual related to his history, his world and his person.

His projects have been presented in institutions and festivals such as MAXXI Rome, Fondazione Spinola Banna and GAM Turin, National Gallery of Art Tirana (AL), House of King Peter I Belgrade (RS), Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki (SKG), Artevisione Careof and Sky Arte (Milan), Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa (Venice).