Don't call me Grandma anymore!

Following a biographical and family approach, this work explores the complex relationship between the inside and the outside one's personal space, using the theme of home as a border place between privacy and deprivation.

«Don't call me grandma anymore!» my grandmother used to repeat during the endless summer afternoons spent together, when she was at the height of her disappointment at yet another tantrum or annoying action of us grandchildren.

My maternal grandmother, Donata, named Tina at birth, has always played a central role in my life, leading me through childhood to girlhood and then to becoming a woman.

Born almost a century ago now, and survived the bombings of World War II that destroyed the San Lorenzo area in Rome in 1943, during which her younger brother lost his life, she has always led a simple, homely life dedicated to taking care of her family and home.

During the course of this project, and the numerous home visits to my grandmother, I realized how profound is the relationship she has with her home.

An elderly person's home is a treasure chest, a cocoon containing an entire life. A very private universe filled up with memories and old habits, in which you may risk to get inexorably stuck.

Without the possibility of moving independently within a body that becomes a burden, elderly people are often reduced to observing life pass by the window, as if the world no longer belongs to them, as if they were nostalgic and silent spectators, exiles from a lost era.