The Spring of African Women

Photography invites a dialogue in silence. The women sought out, encountered from Patrizia Bonanzinga during her projects in sub-Saharan Africa and depicted in their vital, concrete, everyday silence, are here placed in the spiritual silence of the cloister of the convent of San Nicolò, which sends back to a distant and isolated feminine reality, in touch with the divine. The encounter between the two worlds is powerful when photography returns a feminine archetype that becomes a column, a caryatid, a support of the world: "If Africa walks, it is also thanks to the African woman, who is the real engine of this journey. She is the African archetype because Africa is female and like a mother she gives life," the author emphasizes. Showing, through postures and gazes, common identities and individualities that she consciously plays with, approaching with empathy and respect, ready to mirroring herself through the act of photography. Because "the representation of everyday life, that is, the gestures, activities, concerns and joys do not differ from those of women and men in the rest of the world." The Spring of African Women ideally dialogues with the expressiveness of Pina Bausch's dance The Rite of Spring, revisited in this edition of the festival by École des Sables (Senegal).

The photographic silence is interrupted from everyday and natural sounds, the images seek movement and come alive in a video installation that invites us to beyond the cloistered space to immerse ourselves in a mutual diversity, "ours" toward them, not just "theirs" toward us, with the intention of meeting, or rather bringing closer, different cultures through the mystery of the feminine.

Patrizia Bonanzinga, mathematician and photographer, develops her work on two distinct researches: from one side she investigates the relationship between photography and reality by constructing digital medium formats of plausible, surreal and dreamlike visions; on the other side she faces engaged reportage in its most classical meaning, also using film as in the case of The Spring of African Women. She first went to Mozambique in 2006 on behalf of UNICRI (UN) and the Italian Cooperation for a communication project on juvenile justice. He will return there regularly until 2012.

www.patriziabonanzinga.com