Do-li-na is a visual investigation into the relationship between image, memory and identity in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a border region where Italian, Slovenian, Friulan and German cultures intersect. It has its origins in a personal discovery: after the death of my maternal grandmother, I learned that she had a hidden Slovenian ancestry and discovered documents related to fascist policies aimed at erasing the identity of minorities. This intimate silence reflects wider collective oppression and opens a space to explore cultural exchange and survival.

The word Do-li-na refers to remote mountain basins and evokes the image of the margin as a space of possibility — which bell hooks describes as a place where alternative narratives can emerge. Through photography, oral histories and local mythologies — merging pagan, animist and Catholic traditions — my artistic research questions how histories are remembered, rewritten or forgotten.

Do-li-na positions photography not merely as a documentary tool, but as a site of tension between construction and omission, reality and imagination. Inspired by Frederick Douglass’ vision of the image as a means of self-determination, the work reflects on the ethics of representation and the gaze.

Ultimately, the work challenges notions of connectedness, landscape and national identity, using photography as a fragmented but fertile language to explore what lives on — silently but powerfully — in memory.