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About the Night
I Woke Up on a Blue Planet
Book by Auro Saita
Curated by collettivoSERRA
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Presentation on Sunday 21/09/2025 at 18:00
In conversation with Sandra Cane
Music selection by Joa
Lancetti railway station, Milan
About the Night I Woke Up on a Blue Planet is the title of Auro Saita's artist's book, part of IRA GENERANS, the exhibition season that explores anger as a necessary and natural response to injustice and oppression, whether social or personal. Understood as a driver of transformation and change, anger becomes the focus of a collective reflection involving artists and collectives, called upon to legitimize themselves through their artistic practice.
Auro Saita is a visual artist who works with photography as a practice of memory. About the Night I Woke Up on a Blue Planet stems from a childhood trauma: during primary school, the artist was abused by a gym teacher. Years later, in conversation with a therapist, he decided to confront that memory through a simple and repeated gesture: taking a photograph every time it resurfaces in his mind. Thus, since 2021, he has built an archive of places and dates, a journey that keeps track of the insistent return of a painful memory. Alongside these shots, the volume also collects photographs of foam sculptures tied with string, which translate the fragmentary nature of memory and its connection to the body into material form. A poetic text by author Martina Cristini accompanies the photographic units, adding a further level of interpretation. The volume will be completed in the days leading up to its presentation, when, inside the exhibition space, the artist will manually cover the dust jacket in white foam rubber, a gesture that takes the form of a ritual and at the same time protection, suture and extension of the work.
Saita remembers everything about primary school except the gym, of which he retains only the image of blue foam mats, an element that over time has become the centre of his memory. This trace is the starting point for the project: foam appears in the photographs as a living and ambiguous material, a broken body and at the same time a soft surface, charged with erotic tension and alienation. The title of the book, on the other hand, comes from a dream: an entirely blue planet made of sand, a dreamlike scenario that conveys the sidereal distance and incongruity of traumatic memory.
The volume, the first artist's book produced by spazioSERRA as part of an exhibition season, will also include a unique photograph, taken in the vicinity of Milano Lancetti station and the space during the residency, included as a one-off feature in each copy. About the Night I Woke Up on a Blue Planet puts forward a concept of anger as a driving force, but also as a pretext for telling another story, a way to deconstruct a painful memory, reclaim it and transform it. Linked to his experience as a trans person, anger thus becomes part of a process of continuous evolution, in which transformation arises from struggle.
Auro Saita (Monza, Italy, 1997), after completing a bachelor's degree in communication design (Politecnico di Milano, 2017-2020), attended a two-year course in photography (Cfp Bauer, 2020-2022). Since 2023, he has been a member of Camera Club Milano. In July 2024, he participated in the Tagli artist residency in Stromboli. He lives and works in Milan.
“I don't know if I was born to grow up so quickly: it was 1997, and by 2025 I had been at least 10 different people. Who will I be tomorrow, what will my body be like, what will my name be? This question is also the starting point for my research, which begins with my body and the ways in which it relates to my surroundings, the spaces I inhabit, the people I interact with, and my memories."