La Rada di Augusta

La Rada di Augusta (2019-2020) is a story about the weathering remnants of turbo-capitalism, the North-South divide and the price of rapid progress.

Since the end of World War II, a complicated social tension has developed in the Bay of Augusta - around one of the largest and most environmentally damaging petrochemical industrial complexes in Europe - between Catholicism and capitalism, mafia-like underground structures and polarising environmental activists.

The work uses photographic narratives to search for the anthropological core of Augusta's (post-)industrial society - in the conviction that the relationship between environment and industry is much more than a matter for politicians, engineers and pipelines. Augusta could be anywhere.

The presentation consists of three parts: 1. Two large panel paintings address two diametrically opposed social poles: A refinery as an allegory of the promise of progress against a glowing Madonna in the night mist as a reference to traditional Sicily. 2. A video projection shows night shots of the refinery as a continuous loop, whose image sections are static but appear like the "eternal light" of modern times due to the constant movement of smoke and sound. 3. In front of the projection, a 70cm x 100cm book is placed on a desk, in which another 32 photographs can be seen. They show intimate moments in everyday life and search for human fragility and empathy under the massive burden of the lack of perspective.