Lessico Familiare — Silvia Rosi

The exhibition Lessico Familiare, divided into four works, retraces one of the central themes of Silvia Rosi’s artistic research: the exercise of memory as a method of transmitting traditions. Through the repetition of gestures and movements, the artist analyses the origins of her family and their experience from Togo to Italy and takes up the ancestral memories of her roots. Her images are partially inspired by the tradition of studio portraiture in West Africa.

In Mother and Grandmother, the protagonist of the work is the Sihin, the fabric ring used by merchants to carry loads on their heads, which here becomes a vehicle for the transmission of matrilineal culture and knowledge. In the video, the artist’s mother and grandmother show the stages of production of the sihin: both former merchants, belonging to different generations, pass on to Rosi a skill that, due to migration to Italy, was not passed down to her. The artist thus participates as an indirect protagonist: through the recording of the gesture through videos and photographs, the tradition of the Sihin is narrated and learned.

In Angèlique the artist performs a scene observed in the village of Sinthian. A woman walks through the garden of the residence with a tray full of clothes, her phone begins to ring. The woman stops, places the tray on her head, takes the phone from the pocket of her dress and starts the call. She gesticulates and converses in a loud voice, forgetting the tray which, resting on her head, becomes an extension of her body. The work is part of the Encounter series.

In La Sconosciuta, the artist performs a scene observed on the streets of Lomé, Togo. A woman walks along the road that leads to Rosi’s grandmother’s house, in the Sanguera neighborhood. She has a bag around her arm and is wearing a simple dress. She stops, takes the bag off her arm, places it on her head and continues walking. This work, in the Encounter series together with Angélique, represents one of the everyday uses of transportation techniques.

In the work Sihin, the artist recreates the sihin, a headdress for carrying loads on the head, taking the clothes used by her mother as a child and wearing a school uniform: a reference to her mother’s life as a merchant, which she began at a young age. The setting of the video, shot in a studio, is a reference to the photographic tradition of West Africa.