Lisa Di Giacomo
Louise chronicles the life and legacy of my paternal grandmother, Louise Iannarelli Di Giacomo. This work is a tribute to her journey and a broader exploration of womanhood, identity, and the emotional residue that lingers long after her passing. This series confronts the complicated inheritance she left behind: the stories, the silences, the contradictions, and the intimate imprints that has shaped my family. Through performative self-portrait imagery, I attempt to imagine what her life was like, what she may have felt, and how her choices, eccentricities, and the downright crazy things she said and did continue to echo through our family’s history.
The images draw from personal memory and family lore, filtered through passed-down stories, artifacts, and the remnants of her life, including photographs, religious iconography, and a vast collection of belongings found in her now-abandoned home. Louise lived in a world full of color. Her home, her style, and even her stories were drenched in vibrancy. Yet for every bright hue she embraced, there was an equally powerful contradiction woven into it. The joyful colors were often paired with absurdity and delusion; the warmth of her generosity lived beside conditions or elaborate tales. Each room, furthermore, tells a different story. Spaces crowded with dolls, decaying objects, forgotten scams, and long-expired dreams serve as a shrine to her layers of exaggeration. And yet, the scent of her baking somehow still lingers—a whimsical, yet haunting reminder of her presence.
Ultimately, while this work is about one woman’s life, seen through the haze of family history, selective memory, and emotional echoes, it also reaches beyond her. It considers the multiple facets of identity we build and bury in our living spaces and confronts the awkward and often unresolved truths and emotional remnants that resurface after someone is gone.
