Project Detail: Marcondiro

Contest:

LuganoPhotoDays 2018



Brand:

LuganoPhotoDays



Author:

Maria Giulia Piras Piras

 

Project Info

Marcondiro

"The land is all ours, Marcondiro'ndera - we will make a great carousel, Marcondiro'ndà."

The project takes shape in Sant'Elia, district of Cagliari, born as a village in the 50s to help evacuee people that found refuge during the II World War in the old Lazzareto, and then heartless in the 70s by the construction of the “ big buildings” intended for public housing.

During the same period new neighborhoods such as Romanina in Rome, Zen in Palermo, Scampia in Naples arose and also Cagliari received its mountain of cement under the "noble" intent to provide accommodation to families who needed it, but the result has been a marginalized district outside the city.

Subsequently, in the '80s and' 90s, and still up to 2000, the construction of thousands of new housing for the poorest families sadly confirmed the destiny of the district Sant'Elia.

This architectural disharmony, a district closed between the hill, the sea and the military settlements, the inhabitants of the central city place, sometimes reasonably and often rather unreasonably, shows “the bad, the not healthy” part of the population. The scary ones, the ones to avoid.

This is the context I want to fit myself ; to see beyond the negligence that the crumbling structures suggest at a first glance.

The thread of my project is to show the contrast between the roughness of the neighborhood and the sweetness of the children who live there to create a bond made of hope.

The playful and artistic moments of these children strongly claim their extraordinary potentiality in such a very hard and hostile context and they oppose with arrogance to a destiny that they do not want to bend.

This is why I called my work "Marcondiro", because spontaneity and simplicity in the games, accompanied the project as a cheerful, even bitter, nursery rhyme that echoes in the mind.

Photos