Homecoming
The Jospeh D. Carrier Gallery Toronto, Ontario Canada
Curated by Patricia Ritacca
Marketing & exhibition design support by Vishana Lodhia.
Artwork and installation assitance Mark Savoia, Michael Madgus, Maria Colorado, Benoit Despres
Homecoming weaves together themes of intimacy and identity, honouring culture and heritage while exploring the complexities of tradition. Photographer Franco Deleo captures his subjects in their homes, providing the viewer with clues to personal narratives and identities through setting, pose, expression, and the objects that surround them. Mindful of his authoritative and privileged role as photographer, Deleo fosters deep engagement to build the trust required to access the personal spaces of his subjects.
The Italian-Canadian’s focus on collaboration and care, as well as his references to art historical portraits and classical poses are exemplified in two new bodies of work. These merge to reveal tensions between interior and exterior, vulnerability and strength, and queerness and tradition.
The home is both physical structure and feeling, a sanctuary amid life’s transformations. On the first floor of the rotunda, audiences are welcomed into the communal settings of lush gardens, backyards, kitchens, and living rooms of elderly subjects’ homes. Colourful photographs capture the rootedness of the inhabitants who appear confident and self-assured, their possessions, decor, and landscapes offering insight into their particular values and experiences. A stovetop kettle, a collection of paintings, grapevines, a floral house dress, all carry the weight of personal histories, rituals, and memories. As Deleo’s subjects guide viewers up the liminal space of the staircase into more private settings, vulnerable narratives emerge. Upstairs the mood is darker, dreamier, and enigmatic. Austere bedrooms resemble film stills and daily gestures become performance.
This intimacy reaches its peak on the walls of the second floor rotunda where deeply personal explorations are on display. Images of cannoli, representative of Deleo’s family bakery—an emblem of Italian heritage and tradition—reveal themselves among nude and semi-nude portraits of male and non-binary bodies. These intimate observations and raw portrayals illustrate the intersections between tradition and queerness and embody Deleo’s internal struggle of honouring familial customs and values while trying to break free from them. This series encapsulates a journey of integration, creating a bridge between two seemingly disparate parts of self.
It is a subtle confrontation/liberation, aided by dreamy experimental techniques which expose the vulnerability of his subjects, free of saccharine sentimentality.
In the spirit of collaboration, Deleo invited these subjects to bring personal objects of significance rooted in their own cultural traditions and heritage to be included in their portraits. Tea, a fan, a piece of fabric and other possessions serve to highlight shared tensions and similarly push back against imposed norms, lifestyles and idealized versions of masculinity. The resulting portraits are a rejection of traditional family formation and ‘proper’ homemaking but a celebration of home nonetheless. Here, home is bound up with the self, and the act of posing, capturing and displaying queerness is cathartic for both subject and photographer alike.
In his desire to build a connection and capture the essence of his subjects, Deleo creates compelling images that celebrate and reveal the complexities of home, while transcending traditional portrait photography. The works in Homecoming exist not just as a kind of memento, but as deeply personal visual expressions of individual and communal tenderness and strength.