Like the churches, always the same but much emptier, in the neighborhood that is a melting pot of colours, one of the few things that has remained constant over the last eighty years is white. It is the color of the rich fabrics of wedding dresses and the cream on multi-tiered cakes. Milan barrierrevolutionized by migration and constantly awaiting a relaunch, reveals its most intimate face, far from stereotypes and crime news, opening the albums of its weddings transformed, for the occasion, into works of art.
«This is my aunt with her husband. The sisters are nearby. One, two, three… There are six in total. Many? Two more are missing”, she explains in a video Enzo Torraco, the «king of turnip tops» of Piazza Foroni. The street vendor is one of the “barriers”, current and former residents of the neighborhood, who found the family photos and delivered them to the artist Alessandro Bulgini to bring his latest work to life. It’s called «Wedding Stories. Portraits of immigration in the Milan Barrier in Turin” and is the new exhibition of Flashback Habitat open until September 29th.
Putting aside the chronological account, the one proposed by the cultural center dedicated to art born where there was the provincial orphanage in Corso Lanza 75, is first of all a collective story of a neighborhood where the latest arrivals have always found a home and perhaps started a family. Like the Sardinian Nicolino and the Calabrian Maria Teresa who married, as they said then, in 1965. He has hair with brilliantine, she has a long and embroidered dress. They kiss in a small living room, between a transistor radio, one of the first TVs with a “moustache” antenna and a reproduction of a saint on the wall. «This photo was taken with a very powerful flash, very popular among the paparazzi of the Dolce Vita», comments Bulgini.
The artist, who has been searching for “the Opera Viva” in Barriera and in those corners of the world where humanity mixes with problems for almost twenty years, has given up on retouching the shots, even the faded and most damaged ones. Instead, he enlarged them, framed them and protected them in museum cases to promote them as masterpieces in all respects. «Starting from the market in Piazza Foroni – adds Bulgini, also a “barrier” -, I collected photos of the weddings of almost fifty families from the post-war period to the 2000s. In this way, I chose to tell the story of the neighborhood through its residents and bring it here, in the Turin foothills, among the villas in the richest area of the city.”
A treacherous journey for various reasons. To nip in the bud that understandable voyeurism that pushes the visitor to poke his nose into the lives of others, the artistic director of Flashback printed the images on magazine paper thus promoting the protagonists, all children of working-class families, to celebrities of the past. «Moreover, my goal remains to raise questions. Pushing us to reflect through beauty, without judging”, points out Bulgini who, when setting up the exhibition, also asked himself whether it was right to exhibit it in a building where unmarried girls gave birth in secret.
Observing the overview of the three generations of Barriera spouses, many details come to the surface. Moving from black and white photos to color ones, fashions change. Long hair becomes teased, mustaches disappear, skirts become shorter and shoulder pads appear under jackets. There is no shortage of politics. First and foremost among the protagonists, given that the municipal councilor also shared the family photos Carlotta Salerno and the city councilor Tony Leddabut above all in the portrait of the wedding in the Municipality of the (probable) PCI militant of the fifties.
The narrative of «Marriage Stories» is not finished. «In June, we will launch the second act with the marriages of the latest foreign migration», explain Ginevra Pucci and Stefania Poddighe, directors of Flashback. Continue with the collection of new family photos, of other ceremonies, of other wedding banquets. Shots in the mosque, with spouses of the same sex or from different cultures. The important thing? It’s the link to the Wall.
