This work is just the beginning of an investigation that seeks to tell the history of the Italian community in Peru, taking my family archive as the main tool.
The most important Italian migration in Peru is the Genoese, Italians from the Liguria region. This immigration has 3 stages, the first from 1870 to 1910, the second from 1920 to 1930 and the third after the Second World War. The most important stage is the first and it is in this migratory wave that my ancestors, the Fratelli Chiappe, arrive.
The story that interests us is not the story told by scholastic books or great feats made into monuments, but rather the story told by everyday objects that come out of the trunk of memories or grandmother’s cookie tin. The story of people with their own names who did not seek to fight a war, simply to seek a better life for their family.
This installation turns the everyday object into art through a documentation process.
This installation was presented in September 2019 at the Juan Parra del Riego Cultural Center when I was invited by the BLEND Collective to participate in the exhibition “Tribus de la Calle. Forging the national identity”.
One of the definitions of the word tribe refers to a set of families with a common ancestor or to a large family, a clan.
My grandmother, Giuliana Teresita Chiappe Chiappara Vda. De Tomatis, she would have turned 100 in November of this year; thanks to her, 43 people walk on this world.