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Giulia Menicucci









After one of the last phone calls we had, I realized that her resilience and her strength were slowly fading away. It was an epiphanic moment when I felt that something was off. Then she asked me to pray for her and that was the confirmation. She never asked for anything, she was never weak, always on track, always at her best. I ran away from my flat, that flat 1500 kilometers away from her. I tried to find a place where I could be alone, where I could hide from that moment. I went to the beach. I sat down and created my ritual to keep her in mind. G. He was the kind of person who loved skateboarding, not just for fun like all teenagers, but he wanted to do it constantly. When we were young we used to spend every day together drinking beer and skating. I used to be the one who got into trouble and he would calm things down. Since he left I started to be calm too, I want him to be part of me, to be like him. One day I went to his grave with one of the two pieces of skate he had given me and a six-pack of beer. I drank the beers and left a piece of the skate there. A. For as long as I can remember, Saturday was the day my family and I would go to my grandmother's house. My sister and I were the only grandchildren of her last child, so she was already quite old when we met her. I wished we had more time to spend together. We shared the same passion for art and the same love for the color purple. After her passing, I collected many of her objects, which I keep away from everything. One of them is this small press in which I collected flowers from Indonesia. This creates a line between the two parts of me. It connects my Dutch part with my Indonesian part. The objects that people leave behind remain here as they leave. I clearly remember the backpack the police brought back that day. On that day she passed away she was the same age I am now, and was also studying art as me. We could have continued to share so much if she had always been here. We were like sisters, we used to spend a lot of time together, dressing up and playing. Even now I like to dress up for fun, and maybe I do it to remember her to take her with me. L. He was my role model in life. It was because of him that I got into photography. After he died, I started looking at old photos and that's where I started to get into photography. But the reason I was looking at those photos was because I was looking for his clothes. I remember after her death my grandmother and my mother threw away most of her clothes. At the time I didn't know why, but I was already angry about it. i I like wearing her clothes, they have her history. I know it's a nostalgic thing, but in a good way. For me, remembrance is important, memory is important. I am very attached to the act of remembering, maybe because my father was an orphan and I didn't know anything about him when he was young. M. My father and my stepmother bought these paints on a trip to Russia, I don't even know how many years ago. I always carry them with me, I like the idea that they traveled to all those countries. There are many things I keep with me that remind me of her, like this drawing she did. She always said she looked like a pear, even though it wasn't true. Now that I put all the pieces together and I understand what had happened, all the signs take a meaning. L. It is always strange when you try to remember someone you have never met. My grandmother has always been present in my life, even though our paths have never crossed. My family always associated her with a dragonfly, I never quite understood why. But the fact is that whenever I have to make an important decision in my life I always see a dragonfly. C. He never told us anything. He was a silent man, while my siblings and I are very talkative people. Everything we know, we know because he told his grandchildren. We found the violin in the dust after he passed away. He played it until it became too expensive and he stopped. I like to think that he could have become famous. G. My grandmother and I spoke two different languages, so we never had a real conversation. I remember when we would visit her, I would lie on her lap and listen to her speak another language. We had this kind of connection even without talking. Having something she liked made me feel like I knew her a little more. But it's strange to carry something about a person you've never really talked to. I mean, I don't even know her favorite color. C. There were flowers in my kitchen the day my grandmother passed away. We were separated by many kilometres that day, but keeping one of those flowers helped me to say goodbye to her. G.








cuttlefish bones

2021

In January 2021, while living abroad, my grandmother passed away. I went through the first loss of my life, finding myself in a new condition where I had to grieve alone, far from home and without knowing how to do it.
I started to find relief in small things, gestures or objects. I discovered that this act of comfort is a common need during grieving. Some people have small objects that they keep carefully hidden, others like to keep the memory alive in their daily lives.
Cuttlefish Bones is a nostalgic exploration of people's memories, a search for stories and objects that have been left behind and that help us move on.














Leporello made in June 2021.
Printed on Fabriano paper at The Royal Academy of Art,
The Hague, DPT. of Photography.
Not available.