Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1964, Adamo Macri is a multimedia artist whose creative reach extends far beyond convention. A graduate of Dawson College, he built a foundation in commercial art, graphic design, photography, art history, and fine arts—disciplines that together form the backbone of his multidisciplinary practice. Though sculpture remains his central focus, Macri’s visual language flows across photography, video, painting, and drawing. His art probes transformation, identity, and the tension between perception and truth. Rather than seeking comfort or beauty, he uncovers the hidden layers of existence—the spaces where fear, memory, and reflection converge. Macri’s work feels like a descent into the self, peeling back the visible to expose the psychological undercurrents beneath. Themes of isolation, rebirth, and duality echo throughout his work, where beauty and dread are never far apart.
Mariana Trench (2025)
Medium: Photography
Size: 76 x 84 cm
In Mariana Trench, Macri plunges into one of Earth’s most mysterious and terrifying frontiers—the deepest oceanic trench in the world. Descending nearly eleven kilometers into the western Pacific Ocean, the trench becomes a metaphor for both the unknown and the unseen. Through photography, Macri turns this abyss into a psychological landscape, a mirror of inner depth and existential weight. The work imagines a hidden world of bioluminescent beings—“Abyssalisian sapiens” and other eerie creatures that drift silently in crushing darkness. These imagined forms suggest that even in the most hostile environments, life adapts, evolves, and endures.
Yet, behind the fantasy lies something deeply personal. Macri admits to a lifelong unease with heights, caves, and deep water—phobias that manifest here as creative fuel. Mariana Trench becomes a visual meditation on fear itself. The artist transforms anxiety into imagery, using the ocean as a metaphor for the subconscious—a realm where identity bends under pressure and clarity dissolves into shadow.
There’s also a quiet moral dimension woven through the work. Macri reminds us that no part of the planet remains untouched by human interference: a single plastic bag, found nearly 11,000 meters below the surface, is now the world’s deepest known piece of trash. The trench becomes both a monument to nature’s endurance and a graveyard of human neglect. Its beauty carries sorrow; its silence, accusation.
Historical allusions deepen the narrative. Macri references Queen Mariana of Austria and Velázquez’s somber 17th-century portrait of her—a connection that bridges history, myth, and biology. His imagined deep-sea creature contrasts sharply with the still, composed queen. One exists to rule through appearance; the other survives through transformation. Genderless and amorphous, Macri’s creature embodies resilience beyond form.
Ultimately, Mariana Trench speaks to illusion—the thin veil between what we call “real” and “imagined.” Macri challenges that division, suggesting that what we fear or dream may carry more truth than the world we label as concrete. The photograph captures this paradox: life persisting under impossible pressure, beauty surfacing where light cannot reach.
Adieu Henriette (2025)
Medium: Photography
Size: 76 x 84 cm
If Mariana Trench explores descent, Adieu Henriette lingers in departure. The work revisits the story of Giacomo Casanova and his brief, passionate affair with Henriette—a woman who defied the conventions of her time. She was educated, independent, and unwilling to be conquered. When she left, it was not out of heartbreak but self-preservation. For Casanova, it was an emotional collapse; for Macri, it becomes the anatomy of farewell.
Rather than recounting history, Macri distills emotion. Adieu Henriette captures the quiet ache that follows love’s end—the still moment between memory and letting go. Through the lens, he reimagines heartbreak not as weakness but as awakening. The muted light and poised composition evoke a sense of calm resignation, where pain finds its dignity in stillness.
The work nods to Casanova’s later imprisonment under “The Leads” in Venice—a place of confinement high above the city, both physical and symbolic. Macri weaves this image of captivity into a reflection on emotional imprisonment: how love, once freedom, can become a cage. Yet within this sorrow lies release. Adieu Henriette becomes a portrait of emotional emancipation, where loss clears the way for clarity.
There’s a timeless quality to the photograph—neither wholly historical nor contemporary. It lives in the quiet space where longing and memory overlap. The atmosphere feels suspended, as though the world has paused to let one final truth be understood: love ends, but the awareness it leaves behind endures.
Like much of Macri’s work, Adieu Henriette resists sentimentality. He avoids dramatizing emotion, instead focusing on its residue—the subtle echo that remains when feeling fades. Love, he reminds us, is not permanent; it’s a series of transformations. Each goodbye reshapes us.
Together, Mariana Trench and Adieu Henriette chart the terrain between external and internal worlds—the deep sea and the human heart. Adamo Macri moves fluidly through darkness, solitude, and change, uncovering beauty where others might find only fear or loss. His art doesn’t offer comfort; it offers truth—the kind that lingers, heavy and luminous, beneath the surface.
