In October 2020, the Museo Arte Gallarate launched The Recovery Plan, which sought to spotlight artists of African descent in Italy. Five exhibitions featuring five different artists were presented consecutively in the cultural center. One of these artists was Binta Diaw whose solo exhibition was titled “Nero Sangue” Diaw’s evocative installation sought to center perspectives from the African Diaspora with particular attention to the displacement, dehumanization, and exploitation that impacts the experiences of Black Italians.

Binta Diaw_YGBI Research Residency 02/2020 from BHMF and the Recovery Plan on Vimeo.

Senegalese-Italian artist Binta Diaw was born in Milan, Italy in 1995. She was raised by two parents with migrant backgrounds and currently lives and works between Milan and Dakar, Senegal. Diaw emphasizes that migration has always felt like a beginning point for her art. This ode to migration and its role in human society also sits at the center of “Nero Sangue.”

 

 

 

 

 

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“Nero Sangue” displays the economic exploitation of Blackness through a threefold installation. At the center are two tomatoes on a vine, displayed atop a white pedestal. By placing the delicately perched fruits on the pedestal, Diaw monumentalizes the produce that holds deep significance in Italian culture. However, having lost their red color and visual ripeness, the tomatoes instead possess a black sheen that is accentuated by a natural green, perfectly preserved stem.

On the walls of the gallery are small pieces of cotton with images of the Black individuals “immersed in vegetation” as described by Italian scholar Angelica Pesarini. These small yet striking images are taken from colonial and fascist propaganda that dehumanized Black individuals by relating them to nature and distancing them from Italy’s technological and cultural progress. The thin sheets of cotton flutter with the passing breeze, evoking a ghostly presence. Though the images are a memory of the past, their presence haunts Italy’s present.

The final component of the installation is a pile of tomatoes covered in black paint stacked daringly in the corner of the room. One lone fruit sits apart from the rest as though it were crawling to reach the viewer. The fragile fruit makes viewers hesitant to venture closer while its dark skin highlights its irregularities. The unfamiliar color of the tomatoes prompts viewers to wonder what caused them to turn black.

However, Diaw insists that the question is not what turned these tomatoes black but rather who. The title, “Nero Sangue” or “Black blood,” functions as Diaw’s subject. These esteemed tomatoes, planted and harvested by Black migrants, lose their bright red hue and take on the color of the bodies whose blood is spilled for their maturation.

In Italy, the principle of jure sanguinis dictates one’s eligibility to gain Italian citizenship by blood, while simultaneously excluding migrants and those born in Italy to migrant parents from becoming citizens. Migrants’ ineligibility to obtain citizenship by right of blood forces them to pursue a more protracted, uncertain process, leaving them without protection and in danger of exploitation. One of these exploitative phenomena is caporalato, an illegal labor contracting system that allows contractors to take advantage of migrant workers who must obtain work to claim legal status. Prominent in the production of tomatoes in Italy, caporalato refuses its laborers health care, safe and plentiful drinking water, and quality lodging. Diaw calls out these horrific conditions, which have resulted in the death of many migrants. “Nero Sangue” becomes a monument to the individuals whose lives and labor contribute to the country’s economic and agricultural growth.