Anaesthesia

Valentina Abenavoli's book Anaesthesia is a thoughtful recontextualisation of images of war and terror

- Valentina Abenavoli

ANAESTHESIA is an attempt to confront the numbness of our contemporary world—a state where images of violence, destruction and suffering circulate endlessly, stripping us of the ability to truly feel. The book is a collection of screenshots taken from several internet videos-fragments of explosions, executions, wars and cries for help... silent, grainy, ephemeral traces of an ongoing history of human pain. These images, usually consumed fleetingly and without reflection, are here given a weight they seldom receive.

The book unfolds in stark black and white, alternating between moments of blinding light and complete darkness. It mirrors the polarity of our existence—the spaces between empathy and apathy, between knowing and looking away. The layout is visceral—its pages bound with visible black stitches, each thread running across the spreads like the scars of the world it documents. The stitching doesn’t just hold the book together; it interrupts, disrupts, and leaves a presence, much like the images themselves.

At its heart, Anaesthesia seeks to navigate the threshold between bearing witness and becoming desensitised. It does not guide or console but instead leaves the reader alone with these images. They are raw and unfiltered, deliberately stripped of context, forcing the viewer to contend with the stark reality of what they see without distraction.