Das Unheimliche

The concept of unheimlich, translated into english with the term uncanny, contains in its semantic complexity the same sense of impotence and disorientation that we feel when, visiting a place for the first time, we find ourselves in front of elements that seem familiar to us. This feeling triggers in us contrasting reactions like calm and fear. Recalling dreamlike situations in which reality and fiction are intertwined, the project is inspired by the aesthetic concept, that Sigmund Freud explored in the 1919 essay “Das unheimliche”.  When the labyrinthine space of the children’s Colony in the former Eni village at Corte di Cadore is investigated through the lens of this concept, we question the restless familiarity of this place: “Have I been here before?”.

In the past two years, Giaime Meloni has spent intense and cyclical periods within the children’s Colony. Every visit was a renewed opportunity to establish a contact with the place, between visual memory and formal obsessions.


Unheimlich is finally a metaphor of the condition of contemporary living. This experience emphasizes the human need to construct a domestic dimension within a generic space, working on the intangible but palpable register of the unconscious. The search for the territorial familiarity also includes in an antithetic way its negation, of which the unheumlich is the definition.

The incessant repetition of some forms, subjects and colours within the sequence of images evokes the search for points of references that are capable of generating a sense of familiarity with the place.