Roselena Ramistella
In her first Naples showing, the Sicilian photographer who focuses social issues, portraiture and the relationship between man and nature, will be exhibiting her most iconic images from her Deepland, The Healers, Men of Troubled Waters, I giochi di Sophia, and Be Twins projects.
Roselena Ramistella's photos are the results of her explorations of a socio-anthropological nature and narrate the stories of women, men, animals and the invisible harmony which unites them. Her intense portraits unveil the very soul of everyday heroes who are likened to the landscapes she photographs in the course of her travels, because, as she herself has declared: «Faces are also landscapes, they are a landscape of human experience and bear witness to those sites. In some case they are faces marked by wrinkles like a patch of parched earth, in others they are soft like youth living in symbiosis with nature and animals».
Roselena Ramistella has been travelling on muleback along age-old mountain passages since 2016 as part of the Deepland project, retracing ancient Sicilian mule tracks and depicting the life of farming communities and rural landscapes, highlighting the changes brought about by changing socio-economic conditions.
The protagonists of the Men of Troubled Waters series are the fishermen of Mazara del Vallo in Sicily who, not only work on a daily basis in difficult conditions but frequently find themselves rescuing migrants attempting to make the perilous crossing from Africa to Europe and, at times, must even act against the restrictions of their own navy and government.
In Sicilian dialect, The Healers are called “majare”. According to popular tradition, it is said that these women are capable of healing physical ailments and "hexes" (i.e. evil spells capable of inducing sadness and depression in their victims), through the use of magic formulas and conjurations. Nonetheless, there are very few photographs attesting to their existence because, in the past, they were likened to witches and socially marginalized. Therefore, they have always been reluctant to reveal their identities for fear of being judged but also because they feared a photographic image might strip them of their gifts.
The photographs in the Be Twins and I giochi di Sophia series are far more intimate as they tell the story of twin girls as they grow up, whom the artist has been following for a long time, taking a photo every year, and the world of a little girl who takes refuge in her games to escape the most difficult moments in life, such as her parents' divorce.