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Une certaine idée de l'histoire de mon père, III

2013
a four-part installation

white paint on found window (84x111x8cm) mounted transversally on wall, light bulb with base hanging from the ceiling with an electric cable

Photo: Marco Blessano;
© Vittorio Santoro


A few years ago I found in a drawer at my parents' house in Sicily a cotton bag with a faded English inscription. My father recalled: It was one of those flour sacks, which had ben given to his parents by the Americans as part of the Marshall Plan,
the economic reconstruction program, after the Second
World War.

In the 1960s, my father left the Sicilian village Buccheri, where he grew up. He emigrated as a young man by train to Switzerland. He found a job as a migrant worker, first in agri-
culture and then mostly in fac-
tories. My mother, whom he married before his departure, followed him two years later.

This installation "Une certaine idée de l'histoire de mon père" begins with the biography of my father as a distant starting point: a single person on the horizon of global events, social isolation, social integration, migration and the internal exile...

Vittorio Santoro,
Zurich, May 2013