RACHEL CITRINO

La Ragazza S'affacia

This is from the original 2"x3" pencil drawing of La Tristezza three years ago. I enlarged it digitally and tile printed it and mounted on black foamcore. Another image exists untitled 32"x64" and mounted behind an old red window. Just as the snakes and madonnas ten years ago were about feminine deities and their consorts La Tristezza evolved from that series and became closer to the real characters in my real life. Specifically Ziuzzi' who sat by the window most of the hours of most of the days of her life pining for her village in Calabria…homesick all the minutes of her life in this land and her only recourse for revenge was to refuse to learn or speak English. She had names for the little birds she fed in her village and here she could not give them names because they would not understand her…she fed them anyway. She told stories of her village and one was about having witnessed the stoning to death of a divorced woman in 1892. Ziuzzi' first husband died and she was divorced from her second. She was the only woman of her generation in the neighborhood who did not wear black dresses and a black kerchief. She never left her childhood memories. She clung to them as if to shelter herself with them. She sat me on her lap during my tiny years and breathed truth and love into my core. At the window always she was la ragazza chi s'affacia.