“About Africa,” Francesco Bellina's exhibition in Trapani.
Trapani photographer Francesco Bellina's new project that takes us inside stories of migration, exploitation and resistance, intertwining Sicily and Africa.
The sea: a boundary line, yet also a space where anything can happen.
A sea that Francesco Bellina knows well—because only those born on an island can fully grasp the deep bond of belonging, an existential condition: the sea, an element where the game of life unfolds, for men and women who challenge themselves and entrust their fate to it.
It is to their stories and their courage that About Africa is dedicated, an exhibition on display at the Centro Culturale e Museo di Arte Contemporanea San Rocco in Trapani from January 31 to April 23, 2025.
The exhibition by the Trapani-born photographer Bellina, curated by Liborio Palmeri, brings together for the first time in Trapani two of his projects. ORIRI, a collection of 41 photographs documenting the trafficking of African women, enslaved and forced into prostitution in Italy, often through horrific rituals linked to Vodou religious practices.
PRAY FOR SEAMEN, 7 poignant and poetic shots portraying the world of fishermen from Jamestown (Accra, Ghana), the Kerkennah Islands (Tunisia), and Trapani, all of whom are forced by new economic pressures to radically alter their relationship with the sea.
In his visual narrative, Bellina does not seek to be political but rather emotional. He constructs an honest, at times brutal account of realities that reveal painful parallels between Sicily and Africa—lands that the artist perceives as essential geographies in his personal understanding of the world. Through his lens, he invites viewers to question, to embrace doubt, and perhaps to reach the awareness that not everything we hear, see, or read is real. His work seeks to provoke a sense of discomfort, one that aims to awaken consciences numbed by the conditioning of mass media.
About Africa employs the metaphor of the thermal blanket as a key visual element—gleaming like gold, yet symbolizing the first landfall, evoking the power of the stories hidden behind the loud headlines: stories of people, lives, emotions, and hopes for a better future.
Paraphrasing curator Liborio Palmeri, the exhibition offers the opportunity to spark a debate on urgent issues that concern us all and the future of our planet. The arrangement of these two projects within a single path through the rooms of the San Rocco Museum takes visitors on a journey—from the geography of maps to the geography of the heart.
Information:
About Africa
January 31-April 23, 2025
“San Rocco” Cultural Center and Museum of Contemporary Art. 12 Turretta Street, Trapani
Agata Polizzi (1976) is Sicilian, lives and works in Palermo. Art historian and independent curator, PhD in History of architecture and conservation of architectural heritage, since 2011 he is a freelance journalist and correspondent for specialized art magazines. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo from 2004 to 2006 as an adjunct professor of Cultural Anthropology. He has curated exhibitions and publications for public and private museum institutions. He collaborates on contemporary research and projects with artists, cultural subjects and foundations at national and international level. Since 2019 he is the editorial director of My Art Guide, Italy. In 2019 he was adjunct curator of BAM Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo. He is guest curator at the Francesco Pantaleone Gallery of Contemporary Art Palermo / Milan. Since 2017 he has been curator of the visual arts section of the Migrant Literature Festival. He is a consultant for the Swiss Institute of Rome. He was the curatorial coordinator of ZACentrale in Palermo fand has collaborated with the Fondazione Mario Merz in Turin since 2014.
