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Silvia Rosi’s work traces her personal history, drawing on her family’s Togolese heritage and the idea of origins.
The photographic diptych Self Portrait as my Mather on the Phone and Self Portrait as my Father on the Phone is part of a series in which the artist refers to her family who emigrated to Italy from Togo. The two photographs are associated with framed texts that evoke themes such as citizenship and work, and depict the artist in the guise of her father and mother carrying on their heads an object (a telephone), the tool for maintaining a relationship between her country of birth and that of her parents. The reference to her parents’ country of origin lies in the gesture of carrying an object on her head: that gesture is part of the cultural heritage to which the artist also belongs. Therefore, the artist emphasizes the need to safeguard one’s cultural identity by recovering such an everyday feminine gesture.

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