"Diana Markosian. Replaced" exhibition in Turin

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.

The exhibition, originally commissioned by Intesa Sanpaolo as an absolute preview at the Gallerie d'Italia – Turin, begins with questions that feel both intimate and universal: what happens when a love story ends, and what does it mean to watch yourself be quietly exchanged not only in someone’s life, but within the same spaces that once felt sacred?

The work is shaped by the unsettling realization that love can continue in your absence, and that gestures, places, and memories you once believed were yours alone can be shared again with someone else. Its emotional weight lies not just in the end of a relationship, but in the disorienting awareness that intimacy is not fixed, that it can be remade and lived again with another.

To confront these feelings, Markosian stages reenactments with an actor, reconstructing moments of tenderness alongside rupture. Moving through the unstable terrain of memory, where desire can distort, embellish, and erase, she uses the camera as a tool of authorship, revisiting the past while shaping it in the present. What once unfolded beyond her control is now directed, framed, and performed anew.

An immersive film, unfolding across multiple gallery walls, extends this approach. Shifting between single images and split-screen pairings, it deepens the emotional resonance of the photographs while reanimating the scenes through narrative time.

Replaced ultimately reflects on the emotional afterlife of love, how we move through cycles of attachment, separation, and remembrance. The images linger in a fragile space between presence and absence, suspended between the urge to let go and the desire to hold on.

Diana Markosian (Moscow, 1989) is an American artist of Armenian origin working across photography, film and installation. Her practice addresses themes of memory, displacement and the construction of personal and collective narratives, often rooted in her own biography.

Markosian has presented her work at major international institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the International Center of Photography and Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam. In 2025 she received the Madame Figaro Prize at the Rencontres d’Arles for her exhibition Father.

Her works are held in significant public and private collections, and she is widely recognised for fostering a nuanced dialogue between documentary practice and scripted storytelling in contemporary art.