SCULPTURE SERIES

Dolorem

Dolorem takes its name from the Latin dolor — pain, grief, sorrow. It is a fitting title for a series rooted in an old family mystery: Trapani’s father, Leonardo, grew up an orphan in Florence and kept much of his own origin a secret, even from his own family. The series traces back to Sharmini, a lithograph by the Italian artist Pietro Annigoni, gifted to Trapani’s father by Annigoni himself — a portrait whose sitter was unknown to Trapani as a child, and whose mystery became more captivating than any answer could have been.

Each bust in the series is built the same way: not from a single sitter, but from many, layered from recollection until the resulting face belongs to no one in particular. The surfaces are left rough and unresolved — fractured bronze, exposed resin, patina worn thin in places — a record of how much is lost, and reshaped, each time a memory is carried forward.

Dolorem does not try to resolve this loss so much as hold it. What remains is not a likeness, but an impression — beautiful, unfinished, and quietly grieving.