Urban engine room – ‘NEW arrival’
Pina Santoro-Ellwood

‘NEW arrival’ is a Ceremonial artwork communicating a Traditional Sicilian ritual. It was performed holding the NEW* introducing it to the four corners of the home where it is believed fairies live. The ritual is said to be for the protection of the NEW *

Originally the ceremony was (and still is in my experience) so integral to the Sicilian culture that the midwives carried out the performance automatically and immediately after birth. The ritual has managed to travel to the Uk with the influx of Italian immigrants of the 1950s and is still performed to this day in many Sicilian families.

The project brings together New work with a very old tradition, raising questions of how and why cultural rituals matters in today’s society.

By casting the four corners of the new space in plaster and carving in images inspired by Sicilian fairy tales depicting mother and baby, I intended to captured something of the spiritual and unseen in the visual object.
And so it was with this NEW* which i used to perform the ritual for the future protection of both the work and the space.

In Sicilian culture women were the predominant storytellers and engines of the home. With this project I aim to pass on knowledge of the culture through the storytelling of the ritual.
The modern image of female or midwife and child draws attention to the corners of the room encouraging the audience to follow a similar path to the ritual.

By carrying out this new work I aim to encourage the exchange of cultural experiences, help others understand more about Sicilian customs, traditions & beliefs and to empower the Sicilian culture by keeping it active and alive.

This residency has allowed me to work on this idea of the NEW in terms of my practice, focusing on two of my main elements in my work of being a second generation immigrant and cultural identity.
I was inspired by the location, the building and the new space. It triggered strong sense of the new arrivals around the time of the Aliens order of southern Italy as it is very close to where my father lived when he first moved to the Uk at the age of 7.

*NEW – arrival/s, birth, beginning, life, space/place/home, project, work, idea and inspiration in response to the residence.

•Beautiful Angiola – List Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Laura Gozenbach.
Zipes, Jack 2006 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

•Illuminations – Benjamin Walter, Pimlico 1999


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