TURIN — A new exhibition opening in Turin this week asks what it means to watch yourself be replaced in someone else’s life, and whether revisiting the past can ever loosen its hold.
American-Armenian photographer Diana Markosian premiered the show at the Gallerie d’Italia in Turin on April 10 as part of the third edition of EXPOSED, the Turin Photo Festival, in a world exclusive commission by Intesa Sanpaolo.
The work begins with a question Markosian describes as both intimate and universal: what happens when love continues in your absence? To explore it, she hired an actor to re-enact scenes from a past relationship, staging moments of tenderness alongside moments of rupture. The reconstructed scenes inhabit what the artist calls the unstable terrain of memory, where desire edits, embellishes, and erases.
The Turin museum is part of the Gallerie d’Italia network, Intesa Sanpaolo’s museum project directed by Michele Coppola. The network spans four cities, with venues in Milan, Naples, and Vicenza alongside Turin, and forms the cultural arm of one of Italy’s largest banking groups.
“Le Gallerie d’Italia take part in the new edition of EXPOSED with a world premiere dedicated to one of the most interesting contemporary photographers,” Michele Coppola, Executive Director of Art, Culture and Historical Assets at Intesa Sanpaolo, said.
Photos, and film
Alongside the photographs, Markosian has created a new film for the museum’s immersive room. Alternating single images with split-screen sequences, it extends the dramatic effect of the still work into a sustained narrative arc. Together, photograph and film map what the artist frames as emotional cycles of attachment, separation, and memory.
Markosian, born in Moscow in 1989, has shown work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and Foam in Amsterdam. In 2025 she received the Madame Figaro Prize at the Rencontres d’Arles for her project Father. Her practice spans photography, film, and installation, addressing themes of memory, displacement, and the construction of personal and collective narratives. Her works are held in major public and private collections, and she is widely recognised for promoting a nuanced dialogue between documentary practice and scripted storytelling in contemporary art.
The exhibition, which runs through September 6, 2026, is accompanied by an artist’s book co-published by Allemandi and Atelier EXB.
