Artist Statement

"I moved to Taraz in Kazakhstan after the biggest love delusion of my life. I was suspended between a past full of broken promises and a completely unknown future.

At the beginning I didn’t understand anything; I was like a lonely fish inside a little bowl silently observing the world outside. Nobody was speaking anything but Kazak or Russian and my only interaction was by gestures and a camera.

What I saw is a mirror of my feelings. In 1999 President Nazarbayev promised to the Kazakhstan people that they would be all wealthy by the year 2030. 'By 2030,' he said, 'Kazakhstan will become the central Asian snow leopard'. Since then, speaking with the people, everything got worse: less purchasing power, less freedom. The propagandistic writings about the year 2030 are fading away and with them the hope is fading away.

There is no choice but to suspend the expectations and just float in the present towards an unknown future.”

Alessandro Marchi

Artist Bio

Alessandro Marchi (b. 1975, Italy) got his first camera when he was 10 from his father. It was a Voigtlander VF135. But it is not until he was twenty-something that he started taking pictures regularly.

Marchi studied engineering both at Bologna University (Italy) and Delft Technical University (The Netherlands). He has been practicing yoga since 2000 and he thinks that both yoga and photography allow him to enjoy the present moment at his best. Since the year 2000 he has been travelling extensively.

From 2006 to 2008 he was the artistic director of Fricò Music Festival in Bertinoro, Italy. In 2008/2009 he lived and worked in Kazakhstan for an Italian construction company.He is currently living in Norway where he gives photography lectures at the FIUNI school of Architecture in Stavanger.

For further information please see http://www.alessandromarchi.net/