Public Project
endowments
This work is an attempt to reconstruct a collective identity through the memories of my family members based on their life experiences as Italian emigrants in Tunisia at the time of the European colonisation of North Africa in the late 19th and early 20th century and later as refugees in Italy from the 1960s on to this day.
Photos and archival documents, historical research and first-hand testimonies are the tools I use to investigate and question the concepts of personal and cultural identity, of nationality as we formally know it (who am I? Where do I really come from? Does my nationality depend solely on where I was born?) and of heritage of both memory and sentiments (Did I inherit my grandfather's anger? My mother's shame? My aunt's pride?)
By exploring my emotional roots and those of my family and navigating issues of current social concern such as migration, racism, loss, I am able to understand how and why things and people are what they are now, but also what they could have been.
This project is also an invitation to rediscover a rarely and often wrongly represented historical event and to reclaim the value of interconnection between different cultures, religions and languages through an empathetic approach.
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