Dulcis Domus By Mirna Pavlovic

Dulcis Domus is an ongoing project that documents abandoned villas, palaces and castles found across the urban and rural areas of Europe. Theirs is a different reality than our own. They are never truly dead, yet never really alive. As public space becomes privatized and the restriction of movement in urban environments increases, there is an overwhelming encouragement to avert the gaze. Crossing the border of imposed restrictions means to purposefully go against ingrained beliefs, to breach a loose social contract held together by a fear of punishment and a comfortable status quo. The homeless, the drug addict, the metal thief, the graffiti vagabond – these become our sisters and brothers in a self-imposed exile. To find a new home, we claim the ones that were once called by that name, reappropriating not only the structure itself but their own personal histories as well. In an almost carnevalesque manner, they become sites of our own search for context, meaning and definition.