Through a practice spanning installation, video, and performance, Gaia De Megni (Santa Margherita Ligure, 1993) explores the possibilities of the image by revisiting historical and contemporary representations within visual culture. Her research focuses on the film and digital archive as a device that transmits values and contributes to the construction of cultural models. Maria's Dream, the artist's new work and winner of ArteVisione 2024 – a project produced by Careof – shifts this investigation onto more intimate ground, where family memory and Italian cinema intertwine.

At the heart of the work is a deconstruction of the figure of the diva: the structures and expectations that cinema has built around the representation of women. Shot on 16mm film, the video unfolds like a waking dream, or an intimate quest for Monica Vitti's burial place. Against the backdrop of a walk through the avenues of Rome's monumental Verano Cemetery, the search is carried out without the aid of the internet. It gradually grows more intense, becoming the occasion for a voice-over in which mother and daughter reflect on their relationship.

The conversation brings to the surface differences in character and generation, opening onto a broader theme: the role of women in contemporary society.

At the centre of the dialogue is Monica Vitti, an emblematic anti-diva of Italian cinema and an interpreter of major works, including those of Michelangelo Antonioni. Throughout her career, the actress sought to free her characters from the fixedness of the icon, subtly undermining the very mechanisms that produce the diva from within.

Vitti thus becomes a tangible presence within the conversation, while the narrative becomes an opportunity for two different perspectives and attitudes to meet. The video is shaped by an atmosphere that is at once ethereal and enveloping: the camera moves through avenues, statues, and chapels in a hazy, suspended light, turning the cemetery itself into a living presence within the narrative.

The figure of the diva is ultimately revealed as a system of conventions that has prescribed a specific place for women. De Megni surfaces these mechanisms, opening a critical space from which to reconsider the collective gaze.