Unveiling the metamorphosis of sculptural appearance in the variation of light, the project Humanum reconsiders the archetype figuration of ancient human statuary in the perception of our time. Intrinsic to a continuous transfiguration, the statuary aspect is not an attribute of its volume, it is defined by the way I see it, if I may suppose its different relief  in a photograph, a planar surface by definition. Here the photographic mìmesis does not ‘document’ nor replicate the statuary in its inalienable archaeological status, it draws to light the presence of that “there—is ” which vision contains. When ‘being here’ is no longer real without “sharing” an evidence of our existence to some absent witness, in anytime contemporary, the statuary-archetype embodies the memory of life and contemplates each living presence passing by.

Named Parádeigma, works organise polyptych ensembles of different figures 1:1 scale of the original statuary in a number of figures multiplied by itself, symbol of an endless generation.  No figure is equal to any other, identical, parts are each a unique-part indivisible from the oneness of one same—invisible—identity. The same identity sealed in each different footprint moving our steps. Just like the verbal paradigm’s infinitive root moulds all tenses, the archetype is the primordial “exemplar” (parádeigma, παράδειγμα) generating countless self-similar transfigurations. In a reflective-bond the original sculpted-subject and the living observing-subject, contemplate one another where the object of contemplation endlessly overlaps.

Humanum the archaeology of Being was presented in 2018 at the College de France in Paris hosted by Victor Stoichita’s European Chair. For this project, Fiorio has collaborated with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Scuola Superiore, Sant’Anna Pisa to which is affiliated since 2016, and has worked so far at the National Archaeological Museum and the National Acropolis Museum of Athens; the Louvre Museum in Paris; the Iraq Museum of Baghdad; the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Wien; the National Archaeological Museum of Cyprus in Nicosia; the Egyptian Museum of Cairo; the Royal Commission of Al-Ula at King Saud Museum in Riyadh; the Jordan Museum of Amman and the Al-Thani Collection in Paris.