Frammenti (2013)
Lampedusa offers a privileged observatory on the contemporary odyssey of transnational migrants. For over a decade, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who have landed on this small island in the Mediterranean – closer to Africa than to Italy – have been deprived of their identity and turned into mere numbers.
Ensuing rescue operations on the Mediterranean Sea prior to 2013, Italian coastguards would sometimes tow the boats to Lampedusa. Migrants would be brought to the island’s First Aid Center and then sent off to Reception Centers in Italy. Boats would be abandoned in the so-called ‘Boat Cemetery’. Several objects left behind by the migrants remained inside the boats. Over the years, a group of local volunteers from the Askavusa association rescued and stored these objects.
‘Fragments’ came out of a project initiated by different associations – such as the Archive of Migrants Memories and the Regional Library of Palermo – meant to give these objects a new life. At the beginning of 2013, I found myself in a dark attic in Lampedusa, in front of dozens of boxes filled with abandoned items: broken shoes, clothes, cigarette packets, crosses, compasses, Bibles and Korans, diaries and personal letters. All these fragments of migrant lives help trace the different subjectivities of their owners, their faces, voices, stories and journeys. They reveal individual expectations, fears, desires, and a common need for survival.
Ensuing rescue operations on the Mediterranean Sea prior to 2013, Italian coastguards would sometimes tow the boats to Lampedusa. Migrants would be brought to the island’s First Aid Center and then sent off to Reception Centers in Italy. Boats would be abandoned in the so-called ‘Boat Cemetery’. Several objects left behind by the migrants remained inside the boats. Over the years, a group of local volunteers from the Askavusa association rescued and stored these objects.
‘Fragments’ came out of a project initiated by different associations – such as the Archive of Migrants Memories and the Regional Library of Palermo – meant to give these objects a new life. At the beginning of 2013, I found myself in a dark attic in Lampedusa, in front of dozens of boxes filled with abandoned items: broken shoes, clothes, cigarette packets, crosses, compasses, Bibles and Korans, diaries and personal letters. All these fragments of migrant lives help trace the different subjectivities of their owners, their faces, voices, stories and journeys. They reveal individual expectations, fears, desires, and a common need for survival.
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