Damien Cifelli is a multidisciplinary artist and writer from Edinburgh, Scotland. His work is an exploration of the fictional world of ‘Tarogramma’, a detailed environment with its own culture, iconography, behaviours and traditions. He tells the story of the place through fictional anthropology; the paintings and artefacts serve as documentary images of a new world.
He has exhibited internationally at galleries including Whitechapel Gallery and Saatchi Gallery, with solo shows at Spinello Projects, Moosey Gallery, Pulpo Gallery, Liminal Gallery, and Edinburgh Art Festival. He was shortlisted for the East London Art Prize, UK New Artists Award, Cass Art Prize and Delphian Open Call and won the Thyssen Versiona award.
Artist Statement -
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My work explores a fictional place called Tarogramma, using painting, sculpture, writing, sound and installation to create a world with its own systems, culture, and logic.
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I approach storytelling through a form of fictional anthropology, delving deep into the nuances of Tarogramma. The process is one of discovery and creation, where the paintings evolve into a narrative that’s both open-ended and potentially unreliable. My paintings serve as documentary images of this imagined world, capturing scenes that might appear ordinary at first but contain deliberate ruptures: unsettling details, ambiguous symbols, or clothing that implies meaning but resists explanation. Understanding is always deferred; meaning is invited, but never confirmed. Any reality is just scaffolding for the imaginary.
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There is an acknowledgement of the process of creation and presentation. The artifice becomes part of the narrative, with work presented like stage sets or props. This acceptance of fiction allows us to experience the unknown and the impossible; to stand outside ourselves and observe. It is a way of showing how our experience of the world and its culture is authored and mediated. The work resists the illusion of authenticity and instead opens up a space of speculation.
Time within Tarogramma is fluid and unstable; narratives do not unfold chronologically. A temporal dislocation is formed, where the past does not agree with the present, the future does not agree with the past. It reflects our current times, where everything feels simultaneous, contextless and adrift, where we have a fractured relationship with truth and a porous boundary between fiction and reality.
Influenced by Burrows and O’Sullivan’s idea of ‘fictioning’, I treat fiction as a verb: an active process that opens up new potential pasts and speculative futures. By leaving knowledge gaps, I invite projection. By exposing the structure, I create space for questioning. Meaning isn’t prescribed; it is unstable, contingent, and context-dependent.
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