I made them run away

I Made Them Run Away - "It was summer and, like many children, I spent my days at a summer camp. One night, I was very excited to come home and after having dinner with my grandmother, I went upstairs, where my mother and I lived, with the intention of going to sleep. As I entered, I saw my mother and a man sitting on the couch watching television. My mother asked me how my day had been and I couldn't help but show them both what I had learned. I started dancing and singing in front of the television for about 10 minutes, until the man interrupted my performance by saying "It's late, I better go", followed by my mother glaring at me. After saying goodbye to the man, my mother came back into the house yelling at me: "How is it possible that you make everyone run away?" \n \n"I Made Them Run Away" is a multi-layered story that weaves together archival family photographs and contemporary images with texts written by the artist's mother. Shifting between points of view, Zanin depicts the complicated and recurring triangular relationship between herself, her mother, and "the man," a multiple, non-constant figure, mostly invisible in the work. \n \nFantasizing about a man she could never have, the artist's mother wrote her thoughts and desires to an imaginary man in a diary titled "Letters to a Man I Never Had." The poetic and nostalgic writing collides with the torn images of the family, of which the mother has kept only her silhouette, tearing away all her old boyfriends and creating objects saturated with anger and loneliness. The artist captures objects, gestures, animals, body parts and idyllic visions, symbolic images reconstructing feelings and sensations that have emerged from the past. \n \nThe play of perspectives created by the interweaving of archival photographs, texts and contemporary images opens a dialogue between mother and daughter at two different moments, a reflection on the role of the past in the present and an exploration of the coexistence and transition of opposing feelings within family ties and romantic relationships, such as compassion and anger, attraction and repulsion.