From the Same Womb, From the Same Land

“From the same womb, from the same land” is a dialogue between the intimate and the public: the portraits of my siblings intertwine with the military borders of Sardinia. Celebration and condemnation reveal the two solid points of my identity.

I cannot answer the question who am I.

However, I have reached the quiet acceptance of the nonexistence of a univocal, static, monolithic identity.

In the endless list of my ambivalences, I have tried to bring to the surface the certainties that keep me grounded:

I know where I come from.

I know of whom I am a sister.

This project was born from the impulse to explore my identity through the family bonds and the territory in which I grew up, Sardinia. Its main purpose is to juxtapose the intimate world of my brothers and sisters with the public space marked by the borders and the military servitudes of my island. Celebration and condemnation coexist: just as family bonds define my identity, the territory conditions the life of those who inhabit it.

The narrative unfolds through contrasts: intimate and public, dreamlike and real, celebration and condemnation.

The portraits of my four sisters and my two brothers alternate, engaging in a dialogue with barbed wire and “MILITARY ZONE” signs.

I did not want to fall into the cliché of an enchanted Sardinia, warm and devoured by tourists.

It would have been unfair not to reclaim its wounded and exploited side; speaking of this fracture is both a denunciation and a quiet love song.

With a simple one-hour walk through the center of Cagliari, I photographed all the “MILITARY ZONE” signs I could see.

Sardinia hosts 65% of NATO bases in Italy, and this highlights the need to reflect on the relationship between human beings, territory, and social and environmental justice.

Military servitudes and bases transform the island into a gigantic testing ground, where weapons and ammunition have deeply marked both the landscape and the lives of communities.

The Delta area is an example: it has been bombarded continuously for 65 years. Or again, in Teulada, military exercises were interrupted only once, in 2015, following an investigation by the Cagliari Public Prosecutor’s Office that led to the indictment of five generals for environmental disaster.

If half of the project portrays where I come from, the second half portrays of whom I am a sister.

In my brothers, I wanted to represent dynamism: the more I photographed them, the more I realized they could not be imprisoned in stillness.

This opened an internal dialogue on the role each of them has played in creating the mosaic of my identity, whether through closeness or through distance.

My sisters, on the other hand, built within me the vision of female relationships, of solidarity and reciprocity. They made me experience the only selfless and non-egoistic love I have ever known.

Among the gaps of my identity, a univocal reflection of myself has always eluded me, but within the asymmetries of my conscience I have always understood one thing: we come from the same womb, we come from the same land.

To my Sardinia:

Every time I return, you heal me.

To Lorenzo and Alessandro:

I wish I were fifteen years younger so I could look at you with truer eyes.

To Elisabetta, Maria, Cristina, and Costanza:

Thank you.

You have made me a child five times

and a woman five times.