Parthenope project

I always choose the setting of abandoned houses, or places linked to history or myth, where the voices of the past echo in a timeless gestation. Through these self-portraits, I have created diverse settings that speak to the powerful and legendary role of the women of Naples. Starting with Parthenope, the mythological founder of Naples, they also tell of other female figures who, shrouded
in a special aura of history, myth, and legend, have had a notable influence for their courage and stubbornness.

Passions and tragedies, as in ancient Greece, animate the world and manifest themselves in a feminine form that, starting with Parthenope, is continually revitalized. From Electra in Sophocles tragedy, to Sappho in her ode to jealousy, to Parthenope gazing into an uncertain future, dressed in a red peplos on the beach of the bay where Ulysses landed, to Vesuvius, where Parthenope, grieving, loses her beloved Centaur, transformed by Zeus out of jealousy into Vesuvius, a symbol in this case of pain for an impossible love. My journey begins in Naples, amidst sacred sites, the sea, underground cavities, Pompeii, and volcanic earth, bringing the beauty and wear of these places into its structure, arriving at a more contemporary, feminine reality, steeped in this past.

In the name of the siren Parthenope, I immersed myself in myths and legends, reliving the enchantment of times gone by in the guise of a modern woman. Naples is Female and Woman, like Partenope who founded it. Beautiful, seductive, but difficult to live with, steeped in myths, corruption, superstitions, the sacred and the profane.