La Festa dell’Equatore

An attempt to mend a piece of sky unfurling over an ocean of memories, La Festa Dell'Equatore is an initiatory journey, a crossing of boundaries, an invitation to immerse oneself in a continuous flow of transformations. The Equator, that invisible line dividing our planet into two hemispheres, becomes a symbolic meeting point at the crossroads where destinies collide and merge—an experience that marks a turning point in one’s life as a new world unfolds. Connecting the thread that binds imagination and memory, at the heart of this exploration is the captivating phenomenon of moving stars as they migrate from one hemisphere to another. A celestial dance reflecting the migration of people, ideas, and traditions. Using an Italo-Argentinian family and its fragmented history as a case study of a visual and emotional journey, the work aims to illuminate a broader theme. It delves into the profound function of family constellations formed across hemispheres and generations, bridged by memory and migration, centering on the equator as both a divider and unifier. The project’s title itself, La Festa Dell’Equatore, pays homage to a poignant rite of passage that took place aboard steamships transporting migrants to South America. It was a celebratory moment, a communal commemoration marking the approach of a new life. However, it often was followed by profound silence, accompanied by eyes filled with tears and a mixture of hopes and nostalgia. Combining different media, including photography, video, audio recordings, found footage, and archives, the work adopts a transmedia narrative format. The photographic series is accompanied by The Crossing Ceremony, a single-channel video installation that binds found footage of the Equator line-crossing ceremony - featuring old and contemporary rituals - with more evocative imagery capturing the essence of migration connected to the phenomenon of “moving stars”. The video invites viewers to embark on a voyage alongside King Neptune, the revered guardian of the oceans. Within the narrative, Neptune prepares for a pivotal event—the crossing of the Equator Line—a celestial boundary of great significance for himself and all inhabitants of his realm. Transitioning into the second part, the narrative becomes more introspective, metaphorically depicting the journey's challenges and the profound symbolism inherent in traversing the invisible threshold, intertwined with the shifting patterns of celestial bodies in the night sky.