Presented by the The Power Plant
Partner: Istituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto
To consider multiple perspectives about migrations, modernism, and Italian colonization in East Africa – the subject of Dawit L. Petros: Spazio Disponibile – in greater depth, The Power Plant presents a series of online conversational programs in partnership with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura.
Initially conceived as a symposium, this series seeks to illuminate how this period of colonization in African and Italian history informs the current political climate, past and present migrations, and how artists continue to respond to its legacy.
SEE BELOW FOR UPCOMING LECTURES IN THE SERIES.
LECTURE 2
Saturday, June 27 | 11:00am EDT
Domestic Space as Pre(-)Occupied Space:
Intimate Labors along Italy’s Migration and Colonial Circuits
by
Dr. Teresa Fiore
Professor and Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies, Modern Languages and Literatures
Montclair State University
in conversation with
Liz Park
Scholar and Curator
Q & A will follow
REGISTRATION REQUIRED | FREE EVENT
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
In dialogue with Petros’s exhibit Spazio Disponibile, this talk addresses the concept of pre(-)occupied space as one containing the complex imbrications of historical Italian colonialism in and emigration to Africa on the one hand, and contemporary immigration from Africa to Italy on the other. In particular, it focuses on the space of intimate labours; for example, the private homes that in hosting migrant workers as helpers reflect the preoccupations created by the intersection of national interests and international circuits of mobility. The talk aims at revealing the permanence of colonial dynamics in today’s domestic labour (maids, elderly caretakers) as well as the hidden history of Italian women migrants in the domestic sector in Africa and of African women in the domestic space of the Italian colonies (wet nurses). While relying on statistical data and sociological studies, the talk revolves around cultural texts: Renata Ciaravino’s script for the 2005 play Alexandria, about adventurous women from the Friuli region who emigrated to Egypt in the 1920s to work as wet nurses and maids, and Gabriella Ghermandi’s colonial/postcolonial “The Story of Woizero Bekelech and Signor Antonio” (included in her 2007 novel Queen of Flowers and Pearls), about the oppression of an Ethiopian domestic worker in Italy. While teeming with preoccupation, the domestic spaces portrayed in these texts also contain seeds to read migration as emancipation, and cultural/racial encounters as antidotes against amnesia and as attempts at reparation. In this sense, domestic spaces have the potential to dispel social preoccupations and hold interesting lessons about dialogue and co-existence.
Dr. Teresa Fiore, Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies – Montclair State University, New Jersey, is the recipient of several fellowships (Fulbright, De Bosis, Rockefeller) and holder of visiting positions (Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers). Fiore is the author of Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (2017, AAIS Prize, MLA Marraro Honorable Mention, Gadda Prize Runner Up) and the co-editor of the section “Italy and the Euro-Mediterranean ‘Migrant Crisis’” in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies (2018). Her numerous articles on migration to/from Italy linked to 20th- and 21st-century Italian literature and cinema have appeared in Italian, English and Spanish in both journals and edited volumes. On campus, she coordinates programs on Italy’s transnational culture.
Liz Park received an MA in Critical Curatorial Studies at the University of British Columbia. She was associate curator of the Carnegie International, 57th ed., 2018. She has curated internationally including at the Western Front in Vancouver, the Kitchen in New York, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon in Seoul. Her writing has been published by Afterall Online, ArtAsiaPacific, Performa Magazine, Fillip, Yishu: A Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Pluto Press, and Ryerson University Press, among others. In 2011–2012, Park was Helena Rubinstein Fellow in the Curatorial Program at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, and in 2013–2015, the Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. She is currently Curator of Exhibitions at UB Art Galleries, in Buffalo, USA.
UPCOMING LECTURES IN THE SERIES
LECTURE 3 | Saturday, July 11 | 11:00am EDT | Carmen Belmonte, PhD and Irene Campolmi
Italian Colonialism and Its Legacy: The Transnational Lives of Works of Art
CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION (Lecture 3)
LECTURE 4 | Saturday, July 18 | 11:00am EDT | Ghirmai Negash and Dawit L. Petros
Postcolonial Spaces: Modernity, Conscription and Resistance in G. Hailu’s Novel The Conscript