Napoli Stazione Marittima / Buenos Aires Hotel de Inmigrantes

The work links two geographical and symbolic poles of Italian migration between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the Stazione Marittima in Naples, the point of departure for a great many emigrants from southern Italy, and the Hotel de Inmigrantes in Buenos Aires, the building that received migrants for health checks in their first days after arriving in Argentina. The ceramic model reproduces the Argentine port building, built at a time when the country urgently needed foreign labour. The work also draws on the artist’s own story: a paternal aunt who emigrated to Argentina, a figure also evoked in the video work Oltremare. The ceramic rests on a photographic print of the Stazione Marittima in Naples, the main point of departure for the steamships bound overseas. The work is also ideally connected to the images of the port of Gioia Tauro in Oltremare, creating a system of cross-references between past and present, historical and contemporary migration.