The installation “There Are Loves Without Paradise” by Gianluca Costantini unfolds as an immersive journey of faces and words: an emotional atlas that remembers the victims of patriarchal violence and restores their dignity, drawing attention to what for too long was called a “crime of passion.” Luca Nostri’s photographs—rigorous and engaging—mark the helical spaces of the installation, capturing light on uneven surfaces and emphasizing the power of a gaze that “carries to the heart” the smile, the look, the lines of these islands of interrupted lives.
In the tradition of narrative journalism—from Matilde Serao to Truman Capote—Costantini delves into crimes born of personal relationships, giving a face to those who in crime reports remained only a passing name. With his attentive lens, Nostri maps this “geography of faces”: not monuments, but temporary “nonuments,” as Gordon Matta-Clark called them, which invite the visitor to linger and become enveloped, aware of impermanence and the need for a civic commitment that does not fracture into oblivion.
Gallery:
Luca Nostri’s formal rigor stems from an extensive, interdisciplinary engagement with the Bassa Romagna region spanning over fifteen years. With a degree in Sociology from the University of Bologna and a PhD in Photography from Plymouth University, he has developed far-reaching projects—from Lugo Land to international exhibitions like L’Isola dei Ciurli in Arles, as well as collaborations with the Architectural Association School in London. In Ravenna, his camera becomes a tool of testimony, transforming Costantini’s installation into a visual experience that unites art, memory, and activism, calling each of us to collective responsibility.
The dialogue between Costantini’s political gesture and Nostri’s eye creates a device that continues to challenge us: there is no antidote to oblivion, yet each photograph is a seed of awareness. It is from this alliance of drawing and photography that “There Are Loves Without Paradise” stands not only as an act of protest, but also as an invitation to build—through the honesty of words and images—a future in which “loves without paradise” are no longer sacrificed on the altar of an aggression that seeks to justify itself with the “remedy” of crimes of passion.
