AMNESIE – DESIDERIA BURGIO, OGGI COME IERI (TODAY AS YESTERDAY), edited by Elisabetta Zerial

Oggi come ieri (Today as yesterday) is a site-specific work by the artist Desideria Burgio, on the occasion of GO!2025 BORDERLESS – European Capital of Culture and presented as part of the Amnesie exhibition. 

AMNESIE

a project by Zerial Art Project

curated by Elisabetta Zerial 

GO!2025 Borderless Nova Gorica Gorizia European Capital of Culture

Amnesie for an entire community, two cities, two nations, with a shared vision of rediscovering, reinterpreting and celebrating cultural heritage.

Zerial Art Project presents the exhibition Amnesie, curated by Elisabetta Zerial, as part of GO!2025 – Borderless Nova Gorica Gorizia European Capital of Culture. Amnesie is developed as a widespread project that brings together ten contemporary artists in four emblematic places of the crossborder territory: Casa Krainer, Palazzo Lantieri, Kinemax and Vila Vipolže. Nova Gorica and Gorizia, once divided by a political and ideological border, today become the symbol of a Europe without barriers, crossed by shared memories and collective traumas. Ten site-specific solo exhibitions — by Stefano Cagol, Nina Carini, Federico Clapis, Massimo Gardone, Andreas Senoner, Desideria Burgio, Andrea Guastavino, Marco Bolognesi, Camilla Marinoni and Marina Moreno — explore amnesia as a fluid condition of contemporary existence: loss, removal, oblivion, but also a fertile space for a possible regeneration of memory. Amnesia, in fact, is not just a subtraction: it is a void which can become possibilities. In Nova Gorica and Gorizia, cities once divided and now united, art becomes a bridge between past and future, between multiple identities and a common feeling.

The architectures of memory

The places that host Amnesie are not simple containers, but true architectures of memory: Casa Krainer, Palazzo Lantieri, Kinemax and Vila Vipolže tell stories of cohabitation and separation, of traces left by time and historical strati fications. Their structures — medieval, Renaissance or in the Gorizia Liberty style — dialogue with the works, amplifying the suspension, the void and the reconstruction that amnesia brings with it: every room, every stone, every fresco becomes a trace of the past, ready to make itself present through contemporary art.

Casa Krainer

Also known as Casa Sticsa, it is a symbolic building in the historic center of Gorizia, documented as early as 1769 but with medieval origins, as evidenced by the ancient stone well in the internal courtyard. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the architect Gerolamo Luzzatto renovated the facade in refined Gorizia Liberty style on behalf of Edoardo Sticsa, blending modernity and Central European memory. The name “Krainer” comes from the historic family hardware store that operated on the ground floor until 1912, a point of reference for the city community. Today, under the management of the company ViaRastello43 S.r.l, Casa Krainer is a dynamic cultural center that hosts events, exhibitions and initiatives dedicated to regional crafts and culture.

The selection of five artists for Casa Krainer works as a microcosm of the theme Amnesie, because each one – from a different perspective – investigates the relationship between memory and oblivion, intertwining languages, materials and expressive modes that dialogue with the historical space of the building. Stefano Cagol invites us to reflect on collective responsibility: he pushes us to recognize that environmental and geopolitical memory is never neutral, but the result of our choices. Andrea Guastavino brings to light traces of a war-ridden past that remains fragmented yet very powerful: the fragility of its memory together with its ability to bear witness and connect. Desideria Burgio with her intervention underlines how the past reappears in the present, teaching us that memory is not a burden, but a force that renews. Andreas Senoner introduces the dimension of regeneration: amnesia not as a sterile void, but as the “raw material” of new narratives, capable of transforming itself rather than simply being passed on. Camilla Marinoni completes the cycle by bringing attention back to the ritual act of remembering, both daily and poetic, reminding us that even the most fragile memory can become an act of resistance, every day.

Together, these five exhibitions reactivate Casa Krainer as a living space of strati fications, dialoguing with the history of the building and its many souls, transforming amnesia into an opportunity for rebirth and a meeting between past and future.

The declinations of Amnesia

In this review, amnesia unfolds in four overlapping and intersecting areas. On a historical and geopolitical level, amnesia acts as an instrument of power: by choosing which events to pass on and which to erase—world wars, imposed borders, genocides, or resistance movements—it creates fragmented identities, suspended between memory and oblivion. On a psychological and emotional level, it is a defense mechanism of the unconscious: forgetting to protect oneself from trauma, but risking losing parts of oneself, leaving open wounds. On the environmental and landscape front, we have lost the deep connection with nature, the rhythm of the seasons and ancient knowledge, while the landscapes themselves become silent archives of submerged memories - ruins, abandoned sites, traces of a past that resists. Lastly, in the area of archives and identity: who are you if you have been prevented from remembering where you come from? Often, identity is built precisely from what has been forgotten or distorted, in an attempt to mend what has been separated. Amnesia manifests itself in the dispersion of documents and the erasure of stories, questioning the construction of the self when roots are denied.

Amnesia is a journey through these languages and territories, a mosaic of visions that gives voice to what has been silenced and transforms the void into a space for reconstruction, in a poetic act of resistance and rebirth.

AMNESIE – OGGI COME IERI, edited by Elisabetta Zerial

Oggi come ieri (Today as yesterday) is a site-specific work by the artist Desideria Burgio, on the occasion of GO!2025 BORDERLESS – European Capital of Culture and presented as part of the Amnesie exhibition. 

The meaning of the work lies in the reflection on time and memory, but also in its ability to transmit and renew values and sensations across generations. The title itself – Today as yesterday – is a statement that places the viewer in front of a time that repeats and renews itself at the same time, where the past continues to live in the present, silently shaping it with the power of experience.

Desideria Burgio, with her essential and symbolic visual language, intertwines elements of tradition with contemporary signs, creating a work that transforms the façade into a place of dialogue between historical memory and creative imagination. In this sense, the artistic intervention acts as a bridge between eras, evoking a continuity that is at once cultural, emotional and visual.

The positive and proactive dimension of the work emerges in its ability to instill hope, to restore strength and confidence to the present through the awareness of the time that has passed. Casa Krainer is thus charged with a new energy: every sign, every line, every color becomes a fragment of a story, a reminder of collective memory and the human capacity to resist, transform and reborn.

Today as yesterday, it invites the viewer not to forget, but also not to stand still. To recognize that memory is not a burden but a resource, fertile ground from which new visions can sprout. It is an invitation to carry the past with you, to make it nourishment for the present, so that the future is not rootless.

As Erich Auerbach writes, a German philologist, reflecting on the writer Marcel Proust: entrusting oneself to one's own conscience, but not to that of the present moment, but to the conscience of memory. In this tension between lived time and imagined time, Desideria Burgio's work finds its strength, becoming a visual gesture of resistance to oblivion, a luminous threshold between what has been and what can still be.