ARTIST'S STATEMENT
La Vita Americana
My current body of work explores my ambivalence about Italian feminine ideals. I pair color photographs of contemporary suburban life with a black-and-white montage inspired by Italian cinema. The color photographs depict women of my Italian-American family during holidays and celebrations, and intimate portraits of them alone, removed from work and distraction, so as to imagine their identities in the absence of domestic expectations. I am interested in the position of a woman in a family, what her roles are, how they transform from generation to generation, and how isolating they can be. I examine rites of passage and family traditions which, although far removed from their socio-spiritual origins, continue to be a central part of Italian-American cultural identity.
To contrast the color suburban photographs, I present three types of black-and-white imagery: film stills from Michelangelo Antonioni's classic 1960 film L'avventura: snapshots of my parents at the time of their marriage; and my own fictional film stills. These images represent an alternative reality, a dream-world. By including pictures that were created in different eras, under different circumstances, by different authors, I want the viewer to question not only the origin, but the notion of cultural authenticity.