ELENI ALBAROSA

The Land of Tammorra

In the vesuvian area a sacred journey begins every year. It is the spiritual journey of the seven Madonnas, seven sisters, seven women to whom the people of Campania pay homage by going to the sanctuaries dedicated to them. This popular cultural reality representsa syncretic form between paganism and Christianity where the feminine energy is as powerful as the volcano that for millennia has instilled a feeling of wonder and terror on these lands. The Marian calendar overlaps with what were the deadlines of the propitiatory celebrations of the pagan world when homage was paid to Nature and the Great Mother so that the year was fertile and favourable. The lands of Tammorra are at the same time lands of an incredible nature, but also small towns characterized by suffering and fatigue, devastated by the mafia, are lands where the fight against poverty is continuous and the forms of resistance are the most varied. They are lands where death is a daily feeling, where everyone has lost someone, often too soon and they always carry them with them. These are the celebrations of the outcasts, and where everyone becomes equal. It doesn't matter where you come from or who you are, it doesn't matter how you support yourself, your sexual orientation, or if you take substances, however a glass of wine and a plate of pasta is on the table for you. But if on the one hand when you sing, when you dance the differences are flattened, on the other, even if they are deeply feminine celebrations from a symbolic point of view, it is a strongly patriarchal environment and context where gender relations can prove to be very complicated, where behaviors and/or acts that should not be justified are verified and are allowed. It is a contradictory reality where we find strong women fighting in various forms of resistance in a world that is still too hostile to them. They are mothers who often carry the weight of the family, women and girls who are strong in their attempts at emancipation, even if they themselves often carry a built-in sexism.

This is the land of the Tammorra that I am trying to document for: its power, for its beauty, for its bittersweet taste and its contradictions.