X-RAY ME
Artist’s note:
The glass suitcase, titled Myself, is the central sculpture of the X-RAY-ME project and was exhibited at Malpensa Airport starting December 10, 2025.
Shortly after, a mass protest in Iran was suppressed with a violence that caused thousands of deaths, while on February 28, the US bombings began. It was during those very days that I received the news that my suitcase had been deliberately damaged.
When I went to retrieve it to bring it to Venice for Glasstress 2026, I found it broken—just like me. I decided to display it exactly as it is, because that fragility is a testament.
Surrounded by perfect artworks, my suitcase puts itself on display with its wounds and its imperfections.
We, migrants. The ones with the suitcase.
We’ve had the time and the chance to carry with us only the essential — or small fragments of memory, through which passes what is needed to cut and stitch the soul to the places where we go.
Thus was born my work X-Ray_Me.
It is a journey in search of the common roots of humanity, an exploration of transformation.
I decontextualize objects and cultural symbols to turn them into visual narratives of intimate and collective experiences.
I believe in the social value of art, in public art and in its ability to create interaction, like an ancestral ritual in which each person takes part, recognizing themselves as part of a shared story.
“Sometimes we don’t know what we carry with us until someone invites us to look inside.”
X-Ray_Me is that invitation.
– Fariba Ferdosi
This installation serves an opportunity to reflect on the traveler’s state of mind, often accompanied by a sense of detachment.
The scanner serves as true hinge between a before and an after, a transition of state, a threshold; it renders both the container and its contents transparent, abstracting the objects into forms that are already present, in an equally immaterial way, in the traveler’s mind.
What usually remains a secret between possessions and their owner, is shared here, putting a profound sentiment into play onto the stage; every transported object is the material embodiment of an emotion, of a suspended bond. A root.
The main work, executed in translucent glass, was realized in the workshops of Studio Berengo in Murano, where the artist has previously experimented with the characteristics and versatility of this extraordinary material.
The concept expressed by the work and its realization techniques underscore the ephemeral, precarious nature of lives in transition, almost serving as a representation of the human condition itself.
The artist was born in Tehran and lives between Lucca and her native city. Her expressiveness moves across various materials and techniques, maintaining an aesthetic and thematic coherence that constantly refers back to her existential experience.
Exhibition curated by Umberto Croppi
To read the curators notes, click here. (Available In italian)