Diana Markosian. Replaced

From 10 April to 6 September 2026, Intesa Sanpaolo presents at Gallerie d'Italia – Turin, as part of the third edition of EXPOSED – Torino Photo Festival, the exhibition Diana Markosian. Replaced, curated by Brandei Estes. Through a photographic exhibition and a film adapted for the museum's immersive room, the artist reconstructs the dynamics of relationships, questioning the fragility of the romantic myth and the disorientation that follows their end.

Commissioned by Intesa Sanpaolo and unveiled as a world premiere at the Gallerie d'Italia in Turin, the exhibition unfolds from a set of questions that are at once intimate and universal: What happens when a love story ends? What does it mean to watch yourself be quietly replaced, not only in someone's life, but within the same spaces that once felt sacred to you? These are but a few of the questions that propelled Markosian to make Replaced. The work is born from the awareness that love can continue in your absence and that the gestures, places and memories once thought to belong only to you can be experienced with someone else. As a kind of emotional and psychological dislocation, the enduring pain that this project explores resides not only in the end of the relationship itself, but in the unsettling awareness that intimacy can be quickly shared and memories newly made with another.

The artist hires an actor to revisit moments from the past and reconstructs scenes of tenderness alongside moments of rupture. These reenactments inhabit the unstable terrain of memory, where desire alters, embellishes, and erases. By reliving these fragments, Markosian both prolongs and interrogates the intimacy that once ran through them, holding onto the sensation of falling in love for just a moment longer. The act of revisiting thus becomes an act of authorship: a way to exercise control over memory while gradually loosening its grip.

Michele Coppola, Executive Director of Art, Culture and Historical Heritage at Intesa Sanpaolo and General Director of Gallerie d'Italia, stated: "The Gallerie d'Italia are taking part in the new edition of EXPOSED with a special contribution: the world premiere of the exhibition Replaced, dedicated to one of the most compelling contemporary photographers, Diana Markosian. This initiative reaffirms Intesa Sanpaolo's commitment to promoting the culture of images as a means of interpreting the present through projects of outstanding artistic quality. We are thus renewing our participation in the Festival, confirming our strong support for the organizer, Fondazione CAMERA, and for the work of its newly appointed director, Walter Guadagnini."

As a way of further exploring the effect of time and memory, Markosian has created a new immersive film that will be projected across multiple gallery walls. Alternating between single-image and split-screen juxtapositions, the film intensifies the dramatic effect of the photographs just as it reanimates the same scenes with narrative duration. Ultimately reflecting on the emotional afterlife of love, Replaced reveals how we move through cycles of attachment, separation and remembrance, with images that inhabit the fragile space between presence and absence, between the desire to let go and the longing to remain.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new photobook of the same name, co-published by Atelier EXB and Allemandi,... read the rest of the article»