On the occasion of EXPOSED Torino Photo Festival, Galleria Simóndi, in collaboration with Micamera, presents in its project room the photographic series The Golden Liquid (2024) by Giulia Iacolutti.
Through the series The Golden Liquid, Giulia Iacolutti addresses breastfeeding—a subject still largely invisible in public policy—as a space subjected to strict socio-economic control. Within her works, the artist places the psychophysical well-being of the dyad—that is, the breastfeeding person and the breastfed child—at the center as the only indispensable condition. From this perspective, she investigates human milk, often referred to as the “liquid gold” of early childhood nutrition.
In collaboration with researchers from the Department of Life Sciences at University of Trieste, with CIMA, and with the Institute of Pathological Anatomy at Santa Maria della Misericordia Hospital, the artist analyzes the composition of her own milk and the emotional effects resulting from an extended period of breastfeeding.
The Golden Liquid takes shape as a multidisciplinary research project. The photographic series includes images of human milk, created under a microscope over the course of three years of breastfeeding, alongside details of the body connected to this practice. A distinctive element of the project is the use of orotone printing, an antique reproduction technique that produces silver-salt positives on gelatin-treated glass coated with metallic pigment. To this pigment, 22-karat gold dust has also been added, underscoring the symbolic value of the subject matter.
The installation opens with Formula (2026), a “relic” of milk transformed into a pearl through a freeze-drying process.
Last Milk (2023) is a Super 8 film lasting 2 minutes and 18 seconds, documenting the final manual expression of milk. The deliberately unsettling imagery seeks to evoke the moral coercion exerted on the caregiving subject, with the intention of challenging the oppressive idealization of the parental role.
At That Moment I Understood That It Was Not She Who Survived Thanks to Me, but I Thanks to Her (2023) translates into graphic form an ocular trace: the micro-movements of the pupil recorded while the artist pronounced this sentence, recalling her daughter’s first latch at the breast. The thickness of the lines indicates the speed of the saccades, while the golden points correspond to pupil fixations.
Giulia Iacolutti (Cattolica, 1985) is a photographer and visual artist whose practice explores visual forms aimed at subverting normative relational frameworks through photography, performance, video, and participatory practices. After earning a degree in Art Economics from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, she graduated in Photography from the Accademia del Teatro alla Scala and in Visual Storytelling from the Pedro Meyer Foundation.
She has exhibited in both solo and group shows, including at Kunst Meran, PAC, La Triennale di Milano, Galleria Civica MART, MUAC, and Galleria Akademija.
She is part of the project No Place Like Home. Italian Photography since the 1980s, curated by Ralph Goertz, currently touring major German institutions such as Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Schauwerk Sindelfingen, and Draiflessen Collection.
Her work is included in public and private collections, including the Collezione Donata Pizzi, MUNAF, Fondo Malerba, the Library of La Galleria Nazionale, Artphilein, Goriški Muzej, the Civic Museums of Udine, and the University Museum System of the University of Trieste.
Among the awards she has received are Metamorfosi 2025 from the Italian Cultural Institute of Prague, the Mila Award 2024, the Paolo Cardazzo Award 2021, and the Bastianelli Award 2020 for her first book, Casa Azul.
She has been awarded several ministerial grants, including Strategia Fotografia 2025, PAC Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea 2023, Refocus 2020 (MiC), and Italia Inclusiva 2022 (MAECI).
In 2023, she published I Don’t Care (About Football) with bruno, which was a finalist for the Author Book Award 2023 in Arles.
She is regularly invited to give lectures, talks, and workshops at leading Italian institutions, including ABA Roma, ABA Venezia, IED Milano, the Festival della Filosofia di Modena, Fondazione Sozzani, and at the universities of Udine, Padua, Trieste, and Trento.
Since 2024, she has been part of the collective The Glorious Mothers.
