absent swing

Chieri, Italy, 2026
Public Installation

Absent Swing begins with a simple question: what remains of a place designed for children when children can no longer inhabit it?

The work consists of a swing installed in a public space in Chieri. At first glance, the structure appears familiar. Yet something interrupts its original function. Four long textile ribbons descend from the upper frame and extend to the ground. Moved continuously by the wind, they transform the swing into a fragile and ever-changing presence.

The ribbons carry words, sentences, wishes, memories, and reflections collected from children and residents of the city. Each testimony is inscribed onto the fabric, becoming part of a growing collective archive.

The swing is not conceived as a playground object. It is conceived as a device of memory.

The movement that would normally be generated by a child is replaced by the wind. Absence becomes the primary material of the work.

Although the project emerges from a reflection on the thousands of childhoods interrupted by contemporary conflicts, it deliberately avoids direct representations of war. Instead, it focuses on the space between what society chooses to see and what it allows to remain invisible. The swing becomes a symbolic threshold between presence and absence, play and loss, individual memory and collective responsibility.

The choice of Chieri is significant. The installation invites a community geographically distant from conflict to engage with a universal question: what value do we place on childhood when it is not our own?

Over time, new ribbons may be added, replaced, or rewritten, allowing the work to evolve into a living public archive. In this sense, the installation does not commemorate a finished event. Rather, it remains open to the present, recording how a community continues to reflect upon care, empathy, and remembrance.

More than a monument, Absent Swing is an act of listening.

Materials

• Corten steel or powder-coated steel structure

• Suspended swing seat

• Weather-resistant textile ribbons

• Texts collected through schools, workshops, and public participation

• Permanent or semi-permanent installation

Approximate Dimensions

380 × 220 × 250 cm

Themes

Childhood, collective memory, absence, public participation, conflict, visibility and invisibility, civic space.

Artist's Statement

For many years my work has explored the tension between visibility and invisibility. I am interested in what societies remember, what they erase, and what remains hidden in plain sight.

Absent Swing continues this investigation through one of the most universal objects of childhood. The swing is immediately recognizable, yet its purpose has been suspended. No child occupies it. Instead, voices occupy the space.

The work does not attempt to represent suffering. It attempts to create a place where absence can be perceived. The empty swing becomes a silent witness, while the ribbons transform individual memories and hopes into a collective gesture.

In a world saturated with images, Absent Swing asks whether empathy can still emerge through what is missing rather than through what is shown.