Graffiti - Artist Statement

In contemporary Italy, there are still border between Italian and non-Italian. Immigrants are still being ignored or marginalized and mostly not accepted. So by the drawing of barbed wire, I was representing the division or the line between those two groups of people. Nowadays more and more people from different countries move into Italy (globe) and bring their own languages. Also since people are coming from different parts of the world, obviously there’s a language barrier and that makes immigrants difficult to get involve and deeply socialize with Italian community. Again, many people from different backgrounds come and settled in Italy, the identity of Italy itself is ambiguous and unclear. So in Italy now, there is a lot of question marks on their self identity “who are Italian?” The eye represents both immigrant and Italian point of views on one another. For Italians, they give immigrant a weird or strange looking and considered them as an “Others” However, for immigrant’s side, they are crying for being away from their three mothers: biological mother; the mother land, and the mother tongue and being treated differently as a stranger who emotionally did not get accepted by Italian. In addition, tears for having different skin color or background from locals. Even though immigrants are mistreated or looked them as an “Outsiders” they love the country where they weren’t fully accepted by the people and also the country. After interviews in Piazza Vitorrio where fairly equal amount of immigrants and Italian reside together and listen to both Italian youth’s view on immigrant and immigrant’s thoughts, I felt that future Italy will be more welcome and open to immigrant so there will be no more barbed wire exist between immigrants and Italian. Therefore, I draw a scissors to cut the wire.