In recent years, the intensification of international trade and the import of low-cost products have contributed to the gradual disappearance of many artisanal businesses in Italy.
Small companies, workshops, and specialized craft shops have found themselves unable to compete with the production costs of countries such as China and Turkey, as well as with the economic power of large corporations.
Before starting Voices in the Silence, I visited several abandoned businesses: forgotten places where human labor still seemed to be imprinted on the walls, in the objects, and in the dust.
I chose to tell the story of a company that produced statues and concrete furnishing elements, starting from drawings, models, and molds made entirely by hand.
In those spaces, once alive and filled with the energy of skilled artisans, figures, forms, and beings now lie suspended in time.
They seem like presences waiting: waiting to be listened to, desired, brought back into the light, and perhaps placed, one day, in a beautiful garden.
Walking among these remains, one can perceive their voices whispering in the silence of a suspended art.