installation view at the former school of the Borgo Rizza, Carlentini, IT, 2022.
Facadism#2 series of four photomontages, material and dimension variable, 2022.
Created ex-nihilo by Mussolini, the Borgo is a micro urban area in the heart of the Sicilian agricultural countryside, grouping hierarchical services around a square folded in on itself: the Casa del Fascio, the Entity of Colonisation, the school and the fire station. Scattered all over the island in particularly isolated areas, these “boroughs” (Borghi) turned out to be instruments of power rather than real functional structures, which will lead to their immediate abandonment at the fall of the fascist regime. Recently, they have been revived thanks to local and European funds, under the guise of green tourism.
After an exploration in one of them with the DAAS (Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Studies) research group, I developed the “Facadism” project, a series of photographs in which I, through digital manipulation, removed the volume of the buildings.
