Silk Land
The project talks about the Chinese community in the Italian town of Prato, whose presence on the territory has been affirmed for years, in particular as a result of the crisis that has led to the passage of the textile industry from Italians to Chinese. Prato is the mirror of this economic reality, which, through the mix of the two societies, has also transformed the cultural scenario of the city. The Tuscan town is, in fact, the center of many and participated local cultural events aimed at the celebration and the approach of the two groups. Nevertheless, the two communities still suffer from the lack of real integration.
Utmost closed to any contact with the outside, the eastern community lives in the city as a personal space: Chinatown is just a stone's throw from the center, as are the numerous housing units scattered around small workshops or large textile plants in the industrial area. However, besides the territorial aspect, at the base of the difficulties of interaction between the two realities a prominent role is also played by the linguistic barrier.
In light of this reality, this photographic work aims to be a testimony of the Chinese presence in Prato, but poses the question, how to build a global society that moves immense masses of people under the economic drive, without thinking of their human value more than productive? How to build a human society? If we must necessarily live in a globalized world, why does this have to be economic and not thought about human relationships? Willy-nilly we find ourselves living together and in the era of great migration it is right that these are constrained, regulated by rules aimed at the formation of a new society based on people and not exclusively on their productive potential and evaluated in relation to the value of the goods.
The "Chinese model" in the city of Prato risks being, in view of future developments in relations between Italy and China, the constitutive model that can be exported to other situations of multiculturalism, which is stolen, due to the economic background. It is therefore right to think of a humanly organized society in order to avoid the emergence of contrasts and tensions and that is therefore based on mutual knowledge of cultures.
This work is the anticipation of a bigger work currently in progress.
Utmost closed to any contact with the outside, the eastern community lives in the city as a personal space: Chinatown is just a stone's throw from the center, as are the numerous housing units scattered around small workshops or large textile plants in the industrial area. However, besides the territorial aspect, at the base of the difficulties of interaction between the two realities a prominent role is also played by the linguistic barrier.
In light of this reality, this photographic work aims to be a testimony of the Chinese presence in Prato, but poses the question, how to build a global society that moves immense masses of people under the economic drive, without thinking of their human value more than productive? How to build a human society? If we must necessarily live in a globalized world, why does this have to be economic and not thought about human relationships? Willy-nilly we find ourselves living together and in the era of great migration it is right that these are constrained, regulated by rules aimed at the formation of a new society based on people and not exclusively on their productive potential and evaluated in relation to the value of the goods.
The "Chinese model" in the city of Prato risks being, in view of future developments in relations between Italy and China, the constitutive model that can be exported to other situations of multiculturalism, which is stolen, due to the economic background. It is therefore right to think of a humanly organized society in order to avoid the emergence of contrasts and tensions and that is therefore based on mutual knowledge of cultures.
This work is the anticipation of a bigger work currently in progress.
