2019 – ongoing

This work comes from my interest in myths and legends;
I believe that by studying ancient traditions we can understand the society that we live today.

The project aims to rediscover the magical climate in which some Italian folk traditions have been born, referring specifically in this chapter to the phenomenon of Trentino’s Krampus.
Ototeman is primarily a visual metaphor of man’s ancestral relationship with nature, which is initially conflicting for all living beings. 
Back in ancient times, the natural activity was ruthless and incomprehensible for the first men who approached it with fear, creating over time an animistic imaginary that leads to an identification with it. 
Through magical practices and rituals, man has tried to exorcize spirits and energies that they believed hidden in the elements, in an attempt to influence the environment in their favor and subdue everything that has always upset their soul: the deep-rooted fear of the invisible and uncertain, all that is beyond human control.
The oldest observable ritualistic documentation is found painted in a cave in France, dating back to more than 10,000 years ago, showing a man wearing the skins of a deer and his antlers on the head. 
Today it is considered the first form of human sacred representation.
A spiritual brotherhood with a totemic creature, a ritual that often returns in history and geographies with recurring symbols and features: the Pan, the Faun, the Cerunno, up to the Christian Devil, to name a few.
These ancient rituals have come to us through a massive process of Christianization, and despite the cultural and geographical distance, we can see a lot of similarities in all Europe modern folklore.
Something that leads us to theorize an ancient common ritual root.
The forest, the unknown, the night, the man alone at the mercy of wild creatures and the following metamorphosis with them to survive; these are the themes that this project tries to investigate, going to rediscover the animistic atmosphere in which certain rituals have come to life.