Tripoli
2021
Nine original photos from the artist’s family archives digitally printed on G type 100% natural wool felt produced by Feltrificio Biellese,Italy.
25.5 x 17.5 x 1 inches (65 x 45 x 2,5 cm) and 17.5 x 17.5 x 1 inches (45 x 45 x 2,5 cm).
Dealing with my own history and the cultural and geographic legacy of Tripoli Libya, and Rome Italy, this work stems from my family’s story.
Oreste, my father, was born in Tripoli in 1939. His maternal side of the family had settled there from Sicily during the Italian fascist colonization, while his father’s family had arrived in Libya from Malta in the ‘700, during the Ottoman Empire.
In 1969 right after Muammar al-Gaddafi’s coup, all the Europeans living there had to flee the country and were banned from returning to it.
These images printed on felt are details of photos from family archives taken in Libya in the early ’60s: an oasis, fascist buildings, Tripoli’s harbor, the desert, etc. The use of felt, with its soft shaggy texture and speckles of green from grass trapped in the wool, gives back the idea of a place wrapped up in the blurry nature of memories. The images are seen as through a sand’s tempest and the texture of the felt adds to them the reminiscence of nostalgia for the golden age of an unrivaled Arcadia.
