Il Rione: the quarter
I am an exhibition designer and urban anthropology researcher from Palermo, currently working between spatial research, cultural mediation, exhibition-making and community-based practices.
My academic and professional path has developed through an interdisciplinary dialogue between design and anthropology. After completing a Bachelor's degree in Exhibition Design, I pursued a Master's degree in Advanced Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Complutense University of Madrid, where I investigated how urban interventions influence processes of social appropriation, collective narratives and the production of space.
Over the years, I have collaborated with museums, cultural institutions, festivals and independent organisations in both Italy and Spain. My experiences range from exhibition design and curatorial research to participatory cultural projects, including work with Palazzo Butera, Manifesta 12, the contemporary art centre Quinta del Sordo in Madrid, and community-based initiatives such as U-DATInos, a participatory project exploring environmental awareness through collective engagement.
Across these experiences, I have become increasingly interested in the relationship between spatial culture, memory, participation and social justice. My work focuses on how communities negotiate belonging, how urban narratives are constructed, and how cultural and spatial practices can reveal overlooked forms of knowledge embedded in everyday life.
This project stems from a personal inquiry.
I was born and raised in Via Montalbo district of Palermo, a neighbourhood made of public housing, shipbuilding industries, wholesale food infrastructures, and event venues. Although these infrastructures shape everyday life, they rarely become part of a shared narrative of the neighbourhood.
I am not living there since nine years, even though half of my family still does. Today I observe how little has changed how inactive the area can feel, and how a neighbourhood can also be defined by stillness and permanence.
This project uses distance as a research method. Positioned between insider and outsider, memory and estrangement, I investigate how belonging is produced and transformed through space.
Through interviews, participatory mapping, neighbourhood walks, and archival research, I will collect stories, memories, and spatial experiences from residents as well as from people who use the area for work, transit, or other daily activities. Rather than producing a coherent image of the community, the project focuses on absences, contradictions, and conflicting perspectives.
Inspired by critical debates on participation and the role of the researcher, the project challenges the assumption that local knowledge can simply be extracted and represented. I want to make visible the negotiations, limitations, and partial viewpoints that emerge throughout the research process.
The final outcome will be a public archive of maps, recordings, photographs, and written reflections, alongside site-specific interventions and spatial proposals for underused and abandoned areas. Together, these elements will provide an open framework through which residents and visitors can engage with the multiple narratives embedded within the neighbourhood.