Rosa Lacavalla

Sana Sana tells of a journey towards healing that comes from the inside to the outside and the slow and delicate process of recovery from emotional wounds.Sana Sana (Heal Heal) / Colita de rana (Frog’s tail) is repeated like a mantra. Si no sanas hoy (If you don’t heal today) / Sanarás mañana (You will heal tomorrow). These verses are taken from a popular South American chant sung by mothers to comfort their children when they get hurt. A simple song becomes a ritual, born out of love, and its words have acquired a magical belief: if you repeat these verses out loud, you will start to heal.The need to give a visual form to specific feelings and their resolution brings the author to face them and give them a shape, albeit metaphorical. It makes her able to free herself from that weight. For this reason, the images take on different meanings, becoming symbolic translations of feelings, moments of anxiety and comfort, uneasiness and quiet. When we begin to recognize our emotions while we are in the throes of emotional suffering we are already on the way to recovery and it allows us to welcome our feelings with some degree of awareness.Documenting a shamanic rite towards emotional healing and personal growth, the images dance between the subtleties of every day and bring the spectator the comforting feeling of a healing ritual passing by an intricate and often rough path like rock, with the presence of shaded areas, where the cause of the problems and the key to solving them are hidden.Sanarás mañana, she repeats to herself, and there will be no more reason to live this “sad melody”.‍‍

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, and using the Italo-Argentinian family of the artist's husband, at the heart of this exploration is the captivating phenomenon of moving stars as they migrate from one hemisphere to another, along with the concept of family constellations, a therapeutic method that aims to uncover and resolve hidden dynamics within a family system. The project’s title itself 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 was often followed by profound silence, accompanied by eyes filled with tears and a mixture of hopes and nostalgia. La Festa Dell'Equatore is an initiatory journey, a crossing of boundaries, an invitation to immerse oneself in a continuous flow of transformations. It is an intimate fresco of a distant past, of family stories intertwined with contemporary narratives. At the same time, it becomes a metaphor for humanity's search for a meeting point that turns out to be that imaginary line that simultaneously divides and unites. Past and present, reality and dream merge, projecting us towards a future yet to be written, while stars sing from the deep blue of eternity to the soul of the Ocean. 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.