“Fino a qui tutto bene” turns the famous quote, “jusqu’ici tout va bien”, from the movie “La Haine” into a positive meaning, while depicting a fluid situation, whose evolution is not known, as it is new, new like the first current wave the second generation of migrated teenagers in Italy.

“Fino a qui tutto bene” investigates the identity of these teenagers, identity

that is similar to the one’s of migrated teenagers from other European

countries, but, at the same time, it is rich of its own specifities: on the one

hand the influences of the global culture, youtube, MTV, the latin american,

the hip hop, the Afro music and their culture of origin, Ethiopia, Bangladesh,

Tunisia, Colombia; on the other hand Italy and Rome, Torpignattara, the

neighborhood where they live.

All this creates a blend that is similar but so different at the same time. And

so are these teens, a unique combination of distinct elements, apparently

similar but extremely different from Italian teenagers of the same age, from

the migrated teens of second generation in London or, still, from their peers

in their countries of origin.

Born in a country that is different from where their parents were born, they

have learnt day by day how to exist and be, in a path that lays across

different cultures. In them endless stories, experiences and anecdotes

coexist. Many of these stories are bound to their families of origin, to the

religious culture while inevitably influenced by their daily life in a new

place.

I decided to develop a project about them as I feel close to them, as we live

in the same neighborhood and also because I believe they represent much

better than any other group some fundamental aspects of the process

through which an individuality is forged, while being suspended between

continuous influences from other cultures, sense of belonging and self-

affirmation.

I am interested in the adolescence as a period of emotional change, a

difficult period, yet, full of discoveries, a period of life that stands at the

crossroad between ingenuity and brave invincibility. Adolescence to me is

complex also in the way it relates with images, as adolescents are so used to

represent themselves through images. We all have had a clear vision of

ourselves and we all have expressed it through a certain aesthetic, but theirs

is precise, neat, perfect, obsessively modeled to fit the social media through

the filters of Instagram.