ASHES

Ashes brings together a series of photographs made by Fabio Barile between 2019 and 2024 around a minimal and everyday gesture. In a corner of the kitchen, an aluminum plate quietly gathers the day’s leftovers: lemon rinds, prickly pears, cucumber peels, tomato skins, watermelon rinds, and scraps of meat, all haphazardly piled together. These remnants are later fed to pigs and dogs, according to a ritual that repeats itself every day, giving rise to a scene that is at once constant and ever-changing. The act of photographing this plate follows the same regularity, yet each time the composition shifts, recording the subtle variations in the arrangement of the leftovers. This practice becomes an ode to the peasant tradition of reuse and to the continuous metamorphosis of matter, where nothing is wasted and everything finds a new purpose.