Program

FEDERICO CASELLA

CIGARETTES —

Born in Genova and now based in Milan, Federico came to photography through skate culture.

In November 2025, Federico made a series of photographs while travelling through the Balkans, Anatolia and the South Caucasus. The images are presented in Cigarettes, an exhibition curated by Progetto Spazio Libero, an independent curatorial project founded by Valentina Tiso and based in Milan. Working outside conventional exhibition spaces, Progetto Spazio Libero develops projects in temporary and unexpected places, in dialogue with the communities it encounters.

Belgrade is the first stop of an exhibition conceived to move according to the same logic as the journey itself: with no final destination, unfolding instead through encounters and shifting horizons.

“Everywhere is nowhere, and here is everywhere.”

Ten thousand kilometres, a car, a camera and a roll of film. As the journey progresses, places gradually cease to be destinations. They become a shifting background, until one place could almost be any other. What remains is the experience of being there, at that particular moment, without the need to ask where. The expectation of arrival recedes and, with it, the certainty of one’s own position within the journey.

Much of this experience is framed by the car's interior. Federico remains still as the world passes beyond the window, suspended between movement and stasis. The car offers shelter while also maintaining a distance from what lies outside; the window becomes the threshold through which that distance is continually negotiated. As places pass and disappear, their geographical specificity matters less than the experience of moving through them.

Throughout the images, the cigarette becomes a recurring element, not as subject, but as a form of language. It marks time without measuring it, and accompanies distance without locating it. A familiar presence that persists as everything around it changes.

Perhaps also an excuse.

The old excuse of going out to buy cigarettes and, for a while, not coming back.