3rd - 28th May
Opening Saturday 6th May 6 - 8pm
As a first-generation Australian, my parents’ passing left me with a diminished connection to the Sicilian culture that I had grown up with. A recurring theme in my work has been an exploration of place and rootlessness. Recently, I have noted urgency in my need to come to terms with this understanding from a personal perspective.
Terra Madre reflects on personal identity through my mother’s presence, her storytelling, the costumes she once donned, the food we ate and the objects and trinkets that surrounded and gave us meaning. I use juxtaposition and superimposition of images to reflect on contemporary identity and place.
7a. VIDEO: FAREWELL, MY BEAUTIFUL SICILY
Excerpt from Mum’s biography, first reading Mum, second reading myself.
2 min, on loop
In this video my mother reads a short extract from her biography at the moment she leaves her homeland - Sicily. Then I read a previous extract from her biography whilst she reflects in silence.
It is a heartfelt farewell to a country, a culture – the village, all her family in order to join her betrothed who had left a few years before for Australia – the land of opportunity for many migrants from Italy and elsewhere in the 1950s. I can’t help but compare the depth of feeling my mother has for her country to the estrangement I feel for ‘my’ country and the rootlessness that is a common experience of contemporary identity, as urban living, mobility and accelerated globalisation move us into virtual and new mediated spaces which we must learn to navigate.
Video edited by Colleen Hughson at First Ladies Productions
