Luca Vernacchio’s first solo exhibition in Rome, the photography exhibition TRANS-HUMUS: Anatomies of the Province, arrives at the NITIDO-Exhibition & BodyArt . The exhibition curated by Rossella Della Vecchia will open to the public on Saturday, May 16, 2026, at 7:00 PM through June 7, 2026.
Born in 1996, Luca Vernacchio develops his photographic research within the framework of eco-activism with a strong performative dimension, in which the landscape of the Apennine ridge is captured as an animated extension of the body. Therefore, the action inherent in the visual construction of the camera lens explores the reality of inland areas: rural, peripheral, and marginalized places, marked by depopulation, abandonment, and environmental and infrastructural transformations that are progressively eroding their identity.
In this sense, the exhibition’s title evokes precisely the idea of a physical crossing — according to the Latin etymology of trans, “to cross over”, and humus, “soil” — inviting us to inhabit the ideological divide of territories still (apparently) unspoiled, to interrogate their contradictions and the resulting void. The result is an anthropological and “anatomical” documentation, in which the artist employs the self-portrait as a performative device aimed at an existential and contemporary mapping of the province, taken as an indication of a broader “geography of disenchantment.”
Within this examination, the curatorial project TRANS-HUMUS presents nine photographs selected from the series Embrional Fields and Selva. In the first series, the artist portrays himself in action amidst piles of waste, abandoned quarries, and bucolic wheat fields, threatened by the water crisis or the looming presence of wind turbines. In the second series, however, the performative intervention focuses on the use of recycled masks — created in collaboration with Vito Chianca – staging a suspension of identity within the symbolic space of the untamed.
In addition to these there are three new black-and-white works, which preview a monochromatic series still in development. Here, the focus shifts to a process of visual stratification in which Luca Vernacchio manipulates his own silhouette, allowing an almost archetypal dimension to emerge, suspended between fading and residual presence against a backdrop of farmhouses and uninhabited spaces.
Finally, rounding out the exhibition is the screening of the previously unseen, eponymous concept video dedicated to the artist’s research, specifically the Campi Embrionali series: a project conceived with the curator’s and realized thanks to the invaluable collaboration to Felice Ciccone and composer Lillo Morreale.