After being at the Shoah Memorial in Milan, the exhibition “The memory of objects. Lampedusa, 3 October 2013. Ten years later”. It will be open to visitors until April 9th
The exhibition collects and presents the objects belonging to the migrant people who died in the shipwreck of 3 October 2013, the photographs of Karim El Maktafi and the videos of Valerio Cataldi, Rai journalist correspondent for sub-Saharan Africa, as well as president of the Carta di Roma Association which promoted and implemented the project together with the Zona photo agency.
At dawn on October 3, 2013, an old fishing boat with over 500 people on board shipwrecks near the island of Lampedusa. 368 bodies of people of Eritrean nationality were recovered. For the first time, the bodies of the castaways are visible to the whole world. It is an event that changes the perception of shipwrecks and triggers an emotional reaction on a political, media and social level.
The exhibition passes on the memory of the tragedy of the sea with objects, photographs and testimonies of those who experienced the shipwreck of 3 October 2013.
The Hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso, whose history begins with a shipwreck, hosts the exhibition after the first installation of the Shoah Memorial in Milan, thanks to the collaboration of the Province of Varese, Archeologistics srl and the Franciscan Fraternity of Betania.
From the Lampedusa tragedy in 2013 to today, there have been over 31,000 people who have died in the Mediterranean with the hope of reaching Europe. Arrivals by sea are part of our imagination of migration. Yet, ten years later, Italian public opinion seems to have become accustomed to shipwrecks and deaths at sea.
«Hosting this exhibition at the Hermitage – says Elena Castiglioni of Archeologistics, current manager of the Hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso – means connecting stories of ancient shipwrecks, which we can look at with relative detachment, and contemporary shipwrecked people, about whom we cannot Close eyes. Today, for visitors to the Hermitage, the water of the lake is above all synonymous with well-being and entertainment, but the same water can become an insurmountable limit for others.”
In the exhibition it will also be possible to listen, on personal devices, and in a specifically identified space where the gaze turns towards the water, the audio of the calls for help from that 3 October 2013.
There is also a program of speeches with speakers of recognized authority. Among these, the first is that of March 5th at 4.00 pm, with the guided tour accompanied by Valeria De Berardinis and Paola Barretta, from Zona e Carta di Roma.
In the second week of March (the date is being defined) a dialogue is expected between brother Roberto Fusco of the Franciscan Fraternity of Bethany, a religious community that resides at the Hermitage of Santa Caterina and prof. Michele A. Riva associate professor of History of Medicine at the University of Milan-Bicocca. The event will be dedicated to the figures of San Gerardo, San Giulio and Blessed Alberto, founder of the Hermitage: exemplary lives of saints linked to water.
On Friday 22 March 2024, at 3.30 pm, the Hermitage will host Prof. Cristina Cattaneo, director of the Labanof – Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology and Odontology and of the University Museum of Anthropological, Medical and Forensic Sciences for Human Rights (Musa) of State University of Milan. The event will be dedicated to the work carried out by Cattaneo to restore identity to migrant people who died in the Mediterranean, starting from the Lampedusa tragedy of 2013.
The exhibition can be visited during the opening hours of the Hermitage of Santa Caterina:
From 05 March to 15 March 2024: from Monday to Friday from 1.30 pm to 6.00 pm; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 9.30am to 7.30pm
From 16 March to 09 April 2024: every day from 9.30 to 19.30
Extraordinary openings on request, in particular for schools.
INFO: www.eremosantacaterina.it / [email protected] / tel.: 0332.647014 / 3288377206