THE ECHOES OF TIME
LEONARDO ANTONIO AVEZZANO
VALENTIN AMMANN
Production partners:
Aluneidi Media Production - SMARTCHEK ID
October 3 -December 8
MUSMA - MATERA
THE SEA IS CLOSER THAN YOU SEE
TERRE IMMERSE
You are invited · Vernissage
3 october - MUSMA Matera
TERRE IMMERSE
THE SEA IS CLOSER THAN YOU SEE
Across the Mediterranean, from the stones of the Sahara to the stones of Matera. TEMET presents its first exhibition chapter: a meeting of ancestral images and contemporary vision.
CURATED BY: CHIARA CANALI
Within Matera, Mediterranean Capital
of Culture and Dialogue 2026.
#1_THE PROJECT
UNVEILING THE INVISIBLE.
As part of The Sea Is Closer Than You See, Leonardo Antonio Avezzano and Valentin Ammann present the first exhibition chapter of TEMET: a cinematic and artistic project developed in dialogue with the Algerian authorities to celebrate, preserve and share Algeria’s cultural and human heritage.
Photographs, luminous artworks and a short documentary take visitors into the Tassili n’Ajjer, where thousands of rock paintings bear witness to more than fifteen thousand years of human creativity.
Through photographic technologies capable of revealing traces invisible to the naked eye, ancestral figures re-emerge from the stone. Valentin Ammann translates them into his own artistic language, transforming them into constellations of light etched into black surfaces.
From the Sahara to Matera, TEMET explores what continues to exist beneath the surface: water in the desert, memory in the rock, identity in images and presence in apparent absence.
THE PROJECT PREVIEW IN MUSMA MATERA
PHOTOGRAPHY
Leonardo Antonio Avezzano’s landscapes, portraits and hyperspectral photography, document the journey and the human presence in the Tassili.
5 FINE ART LIMITED EDITION PICTURES
BY LEONARDO ANTONIO AVEZZANO
LIGHT SCULPTURES
Valentin Ammann transforms invisible figures into hand-perforated, backlit panels.
2 LIGHT SCULPTURES
BY VALENTIN AMMANN
CINEMA
A short documentary introduces the vision, approach and future development of TEMET in Algeria.
12 min Film Documentary
BY LEONARDO ANTONIO AVEZZANO
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY LEONARDO ANTONIO AVEZZANO
Kel Essuf — Those of Solitude · Leonardo Antonio Avezzano & Valentin Ammann
![La Vache qui pleure - Leonardo Antonio Avezzano
[2024, 70x100 cm]
In the rocky landscape near Djanet, Musa leads the artists towards La Vache qui pleure (The Weeping Cow), a celebrated prehistoric engraving depicting several cattle, one of which appe](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65d381eb070add339f08c9e2/272abbb6-f017-4f18-a3a5-4aaef9d391f9/Sebiba2024_LeonardoAvezzanoStudio%26Creation--9.jpg)
La Vache qui pleure - Leonardo Antonio Avezzano [2024, 70x100 cm] In the rocky landscape near Djanet, Musa leads the artists towards La Vache qui pleure (The Weeping Cow), a celebrated prehistoric engraving depicting several cattle, one of which appears to shed a tear. According to the story shared by Musa, that tear holds the ancient artist’s sorrow at the disappearance of water, together with a warning to future generations. The once-green Sahara has become a desert; water, however, has not vanished entirely. It continues to exist deep within the earth, unseen beneath the sand. The work connects the Sahara’s climatic past with our present. The tear carved into the stone travels across millennia, reminding us that water is memory, life and a shared responsibility. The sea is closer than you see.
![Kel Ténéré — Those of the desert
Leonardo Antonio Avezzano
[2023, 70X100]
Mohamed emerges in the canyon wearing a white robe and a sky-blue chèche, a luminous presence framed by the rock walls of the Tassili.
These natural passages lead up to the pla](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65d381eb070add339f08c9e2/b6230de7-fcdf-4e1d-a94b-923844ae61fb/KELTENERE.png)
Kel Ténéré — Those of the desert Leonardo Antonio Avezzano [2023, 70X100] Mohamed emerges in the canyon wearing a white robe and a sky-blue chèche, a luminous presence framed by the rock walls of the Tassili. These natural passages lead up to the plateau and onwards to Séfar. To traverse them is to enter, gradually, a landscape in which human scale seems to dissolve: rock dominates the space, while the path becomes a fine line between finding one’s way and losing it. Kel Ténéré, “those of the desert”, describes more than the people who inhabit these lands. It evokes a deep relationship with the landscape, shaped through movement, knowledge and its passing from one generation to the next. Mohamed is not simply a figure within the photograph: he is the one who knows the passage and makes the journey possible.
![Ghost
Leonardo Antonio Avezzano
2024, Djanet, 70x100]
At the moment of capture, Leonardo Antonio Avezzano sees a woman draped in the ceremonial attire of the Sebeïba, the ritual celebrated by the Tuareg communities of the Djanet oasis. Only later, wh](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65d381eb070add339f08c9e2/4fd592e5-d82a-4af5-ae4d-df0180c7c635/Sebiba2024_LeonardoAvezzanoStudio%26Creation-2.jpg)
Ghost Leonardo Antonio Avezzano 2024, Djanet, 70x100] At the moment of capture, Leonardo Antonio Avezzano sees a woman draped in the ceremonial attire of the Sebeïba, the ritual celebrated by the Tuareg communities of the Djanet oasis. Only later, while examining the photograph, does he discover a second figure behind her: a veiled face, almost entirely concealed from view. This unintended presence transforms the portrait into an image suspended between reality and apparition. The “ghost” does not necessarily belong to another world: it may be a person, a reflection, a memory or simply something the eye was not yet ready to recognise. The work thus becomes a meditation on the limits of perception. Even when we believe we see clearly, part of reality remains hidden.
![Musa
Leonardo Antonio Avezzano
Fotografia e chèche, 70 × 100 cm
[2024, DJanet]
Musa, whose name means Moses, is one of the Tuareg who accompanied the artists across the vastness of the Sahara and along the trails of the Tassili n’Ajjer.
His portrait](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/65d381eb070add339f08c9e2/16fa42c0-6ff9-4dd4-aeb7-b76caaee81fe/Sebiba2024_LeonardoAvezzanoStudio%26Creation--7.jpg)
Musa Leonardo Antonio Avezzano Fotografia e chèche, 70 × 100 cm [2024, DJanet] Musa, whose name means Moses, is one of the Tuareg who accompanied the artists across the vastness of the Sahara and along the trails of the Tassili n’Ajjer. His portrait is not confined to the photograph. A real chèche, the long cloth traditionally worn in the Sahara, extends beyond the image, completing the figure within the exhibition space. The photograph becomes a physical presence, as the subject seems to cross the boundary between representation and reality. Musa is both an individual portrait and a tribute to the living guardians of the desert’s memory. Without their knowledge of the land, their storytelling and their ability to read the landscape, many of the stories held within the Tassili would remain beyond reach.
FILM DOCUMENTARY
12 min - 4KColor - Italian Subtitles
Directed by LEONARDO ANTONIO AVEZZANO
Editing: Laith Qaryouti, Leonardo A. Avezano
The Echoes of Time.
A short documentary by Leonardo Antonio Avezzano introduces TEMET’s vision, field research and future development in Algeria.
The film introduces the vision of TEMET and its future development: a journey through cinema, photography, contemporary art, field research and Tuareg knowledge, dedicated to Algeria’s cultural and human heritage.
Born from explorations in the Tassili n’Ajjer, the project approaches rock art not as static remnants of the past, but as messages still capable of travelling through time. Advanced photographic technologies reveal figures that have become invisible, while light and contemporary artistic language give them a renewed presence.
This short documentary tells the story not of a completed project, but of a journey just beginning: an evolving work that will return to the Sahara and develop into a film, a photographic exploration and a larger exhibition installation.
LIGHTSCULPTURES
BY VALENTIN AMMANN
Stone. Light. Memory.
Valentin Ammann METANKAL Hand-perforated, backlit black panel 72 × 102 cm 2025, Paris–San Severo A Tamasheq word documented in Charles de Foucauld’s Tuareg–French dictionary. It denotes a place where what exists becomes invisible to the eye. The term refers to a hidden, concealed space where beings or objects, though present, elude sight, as if sheltered by the silence of the desert and the folds of the world.
TASSILI III Hand-perforated, backlit black panel 82 × 72 cm 2025, Paris–San Severo “The palm of a hand cannot obscure the sun.” — Tuareg proverb
VALENTIN AMMANN
Valentin Ammann is an Alsatian artist whose practice intertwines digital painting and hand engraving using a pointillist technique, questioning the relativity of perception.
His works reveal themselves fully as the viewer moves. Dark panels, embroidered with light, give form to an aesthetic of emptiness and absence: light passes through thousands of hand-made perforations, revealing figures that seem suspended on the surface.
Following his travels in the Sahara, Ammann turned his research towards the origins of art and the creative impulse deeply rooted in human beings. In TEMET, light becomes a means of bringing ancestral images back into presence, creating a dialogue between matter, perception, memory and time.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING.
REVEAL THE VISION
MATERA - OCTOBER 3RD 2026
TEMET makes its artistic debut in Matera as part of The Sea Is Closer Than You See, bringing photography, light and cinema together in the project’s first public exhibition.
DEEPEN THE RESEARCH
CROSS THE WHOLE TASSILI DESERT - First half of 2027
Further exploration, photographic research, finding new ghost paintings, new artworks and development of the full film.
RETURN TO SOURCE
THE FIRST EXHIBITION CELEBRATED IN DJANET - tbd
A planned exhibition in Djanet, reconnecting the work with the territory and communities from which it grows.
Two practices.
A shared search.
LEONARDO A. AVEZZANO
Filmmaker · Photographer · Producer
Through expeditions and first-hand stories, Leonardo explores human potential, cultural identity and our relationship with nature. In TEMET, his fieldwork and photography connect the landscape with the people who carry its memory.
VALENTIN AMMANN
Artist · Producer
Valentin combines digital painting and manual pointillist engraving. His black surfaces reveal themselves through light and the viewer’s movement, bringing ancestral images into a dialogue with matter, perception and time.
PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SMART CHECK ID and ALJUNEIDI MEDIA PRODUCTION.
You are invited · Vernissage
3 october - MUSMA Matera
TERRE IMMERSE
THE SEA IS CLOSER THAN YOU SEE
Across the Mediterranean, from the stones of the Sahara to the stones of Matera. TEMET presents its first exhibition chapter: a meeting of ancestral images and contemporary vision.
CURATED BY: CHIARA CANALI
Within Matera, Mediterranean Capital
of Culture and Dialogue 2026.