Damien Cifelli is a multidisciplinary artist and writer from Edinburgh, now based in London. His work explores a fictional land called Tarogramma. Taking cues from the scale and compositions of historical paintings and historical sculptures, he has constructed a detailed culture with its own aesthetic, way of life and way of understanding the world; a culture that is both strange and eerily similar to our own.

He says that knowledge of this civilization is supposedly limited to artifacts and sparse imagery, leaving people to wonder if it is an afterlife, a forgotten city or an entirely fictional construct.

Many of the works have the tone of fashion documentary images or perhaps a sports brand campaign, from the compositions to the styling and nonchalant expressions.

The resemblance seems deliberate, given Cifelli’s objective with Tarogramma. Through this body of work, he asks, “In creating a fictitious world, can we hold a mirror up to ourselves?”