The needle moves in and out of the canvas, leaving behind the thread as it goes.
Smiling people unaware of what awaited them, faces erased, like their lives.
Broken families and war-torn cities.
Red is the thread, like blood - shed in vain.
Civilians and the militaries paying the price of the totalitarian regimes.
Red is definitely my favourite colour. It attracts attention and is a symbol of power and energy: it immediately makes you want to get into action.
When it is a scarlet red, it becomes almost violent.
These pictures are part of the archives of Franca Brengi, my father's first wife, and came to me as a sort of inheritance. Before I had sawn their faces, the photos from 1942 portrayed Italian soldiers in Cuneo and Vinadio, in Piedmont, during WWII.
I envisioned the same person portrayed in all the pictures, the milite ignoto (which means the unknow soldier) because - to this day - we don't know their identity.