Moulding Tradition
Gallery Libby Sellers, 2010
Moulding Tradition centers on the geo – political (and pertinent) issues of immigration, assimilation, and the historical cross – flow of cultural currents between North Africa and Italy.
Moulding Tradition is informed by the ongoing Sicilian ceramic tradition of Teste di Moro: copies of seventeenth – century vases from Caltagirone1 in Sicily that portray a grotesque Moorish face. The tradition refers to an earlier era in Sicily’s history when the Moorish invasion of the area introduced majolica ceramics to Europe.
Over ten centuries later, the same people that once occupied Sicily, bringing their cultural heritage that helped make Caltagirone famous, are returning – not as conquerors but as immigrants. Recent public opinion polls have claimed that 65% of Italians believe that the immigrants are ‘a danger for our culture’. Through Moulding Tradition, Formafantasma documents these contradictions while questioning attitudes towards immigration, national identity and the tendency of craft to perpetuate the past mindlessly.
Each object speaks to some aspect of the immigrant experience – wine bottles recall the fruit in Sicily harvested by migrants and bowls represent the boats conveying refugees across the Mediterranean. The result is a collection of refined ceramic vessels garlanded with portraits of an émigré, buoy – like discs engraved with the percentage of refugees who immigrate per year, and ribbons woven with news reports on illegal immigration published during the project’s production period.
