FRIENDS: MONTH #001

"my mother from the time she was a a girl living in a rich family to the time in which her family lost everything and moved to my native highland where she got pregnant of my father at a very young age and after much abuses married a surgeon and began a more financially stable life making an effort to keep up a relationship with her but at last having to give up for our totally different view in life"

FRIENDS: MONTH #002

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"pictures of my very young father who eventually moved to canada for good with my mother barely saving any photos of him and mostly building this compilation out of the photos he sent me some quarter of a century later after we got back in touch and eventually met briefly in montreal only twice in our lives after which i could no longer stand him for his nationalistic ideas but highly respected his love for nature"

FRIENDS: MONTH #003

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"picture of my twin sister with whom i spent all my childhood living the trauma of our parents divorcing and the trauma of leaving the mountains where we were born and getting quite close during our teenager years especially after spending a year in the united states but then growing apart after i moved to sweden and she got adopted by my stepfather eventually changing her last name and becoming his assistant hating the fact i got in touch with our actual father"

FRIENDS: MONTH #004

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"picture of my maternal grandfather who was the only person in my childhood to give me some love taking me for nice field trips and investing in me and my sister despite him not being very intelligent and being quite womanizer later losing all the great pictures he had of when he was young during a flood that devastated his cellar"

FRIENDS: MONTH #005

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"pictures of my maternal grandmother who was always very kind to me and often told me of her childhood growing up in an old villa turned into a farm by her forefathers later however marrying my grandfather and starting to knit sweaters so successfully that in a decade she had her own clothes manufacturing industry but getting heart related issues after it went bankrupt"

FRIENDS: MONTH #006

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"pictures of my paternal grandfather who was a very kind man having survived the russian retreat during the war and having come back to his native highland completely starved also having grown up without his father who immigrated to australia and never returned and hearing from his cousin the famous writer rigoni stern how much he just wanted to die during the retreat in the cold russian winter possibly affecting the whole of our family but either way with my mother breaking up all the contacts with my father family from the age of six being able to meet him until he died ten years later and regretting this quite much only having a few sweet memories of him such as sharing the same bed for our afternoon nap and beside that learning of him through my father who tells me of the time he stood up for him and from my aunts who described how honest he was even walking back the whole highland to return a few coins he got extra after a purchase and also hearing of the fact that he was always going to the local bar in the afternoon getting alcohol and perhaps dying of an alcohol related problem in the liver very likely the alcohol being an habit he took from the war and from the mountain culture there after but also as a way too handle my grandmother with quite a character"

FRIENDS: MONTH #007

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"pictures of my maternal grandmother's mother who was very kind to me and my sister the little time we spent together before she died and who had a quite harsh husband who ran a small straw hats manufacture in the hills below my native mountains"

FRIENDS: MONTH #008

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"pictures of my paternal grandmother whom i got the opportunity to meet after many years of separations that my parents' divorce caused finding an intelligent woman but also quite strict recognizing in her a trait in the family that is quite severe"

FRIENDS: MONTH #009

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"picture of my maternal uncle gigi who was always very kind to me remembering to congratulate for all my birthdays and even offered me a position in one of his factory luckily in the end refusing it with him getting increasingly into troubles taking big risks and eventually ending up in prison"

FRIENDS: MONTH #010

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"pictures of my aunt donatella who was born just a few years before me and who loved me very much and suffered incredibly after my mother remarried and i was no longer able to see her and my grandparents from my father side and only after many years being able to reconnect to her despite her living in the city of bologna further to the south and beside her being a bit more on her own than my other aunts like one of them however suffering terrible headaches but trying to keep cool about it without too much drama"

FRIENDS: MONTH #011

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"pictures of my paternal uncle paolo who i met in very few occasions but was quite a character living in the mountains with my grandmother dressing up like a native indian and reading many books until she died and he had to survive on a chicken and the egg it gave him at last giving it all up and picking up a job in the industrial area down the mountains"

FRIENDS: MONTH #012

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"pictures of my aunt chiara a most kind person and very educated and intelligent but above all very honest and meeting her in my twenties after breaking the ban imposed by my mother not to meet any of my father's relatives and discovering what i great person i have missed out feeling very fascinated about her life abroad working in scotland as a doctor but also in nepal and feeling most attuned with her rather than with the bigot and non cultivated relatives of my mother side also pitying her for having tried to set up a bed and breakfast in padua but being cheated by a construction company leaving her very poor for years having to eat only bread and later also getting many tumors and nonetheless walking up from the train station to our mountain village to meet me and the kids and feeling most inspired by her to put my roots back in our alps also learning from her some vocabulary from our old bavarian dialect"

FRIENDS: MONTH #013

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"pictures of my aunt francesca who was the first of my relatives with whom i connected back after years apart with my mother breaking relationship with my father's family and discovering a person with a big heart who used to be very beautiful and married a rich but old englishman after working as an au pair for his family also getting to know how my mother's father sexually harassed her and generally becoming a widow at a very young age taking care of her daughter and only having one more relationship with an italian man who made her loose a consistent part of the inheritance she got from her dead english husband soon after turning to smoking and staying confined to her house getting daily migraines but still being able to be very sweet especially to my kids but also to me and trying to be very light with her especially on the topic of my father who was her closest siblings and not revealing how radicalized he became living alone in canada"

FRIENDS: MONTH #014

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"pictures of my stepfather i was forced to call father and felt afraid of throughout my childhood and terrified about all his attempts to be a father teaching for example how to ski and or speak english always getting very angry and impatient also getting quite frustrated and irritated about his work as a surgeon which however under the influence of my mother became very profitable and really only as i grew up beginning to find him much nicer and actually starting to go along with him well taking nice walks together and talking about many things in the period before getting kids and after my divorce with my swedish wife but then having to look after my new family in the netherlands and having no time to hang out with him particularly with the pandemic blocking any kind of travels also beginning to feel upset not particularly with him but in general with right-wing catholics after their representatives tried to sabotage my project museum and finding my stepfather getting old and becoming more and more linked to these traditional values getting entangled with priests and generally praising fascism and not so much understanding my art or anything beyond religious paintings he became quite obsessed about in his different periods characterized by strong manias such as eating pasta for breakfast and going on a gondola boat in venice and eating at one particular restaurant until changing to another very monotonous paradigm with my mother at last having to comply with it all"

FRIENDS: MONTH #015

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"pictures of my maternal grandmother's father with whom i felt rather at easy with despite his close mindedness and the fact that he kept the whole of the farm that was partially of my grandmother all for himself but nonetheless enjoying how he did manage in the end to get it going and transmit his work as a farmer to his son who latter sold everything after his death"

FRIENDS: MONTH #016

"pictures of my old brazilian friend mario with whom i lived a whole year in a tiny town in the midwest being the two of us the only latino among many blond big american guys too often bullying us but nonetheless spending a good time together especially staying in the trailer where he lived with his old foster parents out in the woods always feeling very impressed about how easily he could conquest girls later getting in touch with him when he became a professor back in brazil ultimately hosting him and his family in the netherlands after almost thirty years apart"