Gian Maria Tosatti installs 'My Heart Is Empty as a Mirror' on a salt lake in Odessa

Italian artist Gian Maria Tosatti (born 1980, Rome) has realized the Odessa episode of his ongoing project 'Il mio cuore è vuoto come uno specchio' (My Heart Is Empty as a Mirror) on the Kuyalnyk salt lake in Ukraine. The installation, curated by Kateryna Filyuk and Alessandra Troncone, is presented by The Blank Contemporary Art (Bergamo) and Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Kyiv). It was supported by the Italian Council (7th edition, 2019), a program of the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. The work consists of eight large street lamps on the white salt lake, evoking humanity through electricity—a human invention. Tosatti describes the site as a ruined Soviet village behind a salt lake where the horizon is indistinguishable, creating a metaphor for a civilization living in its own ruins. The Odessa episode is part of the 'Dittico del Trauma' (Trauma Diptych), which also includes an Istanbul episode curated by Devrim Kadirbeyoglu and Antonello Tolve, to be presented in May 2021. The broader project has previously touched Catania, Riga, and Cape Town, investigating critical points in the crisis of Western democracy.