THE SILENCE IS MAFIA

It is hope in the midst of tragedy, a smile amid the desperation and a collection of stories that have made history. This two-part work is both a bloodcurdling scream and a whisper in the ear, as it tells of lives destroyed by a shot in the back, witnesses silenced and unspeakable horrors dissolved in acid. "Silence… is Mafia!" screams the banner, like the one unfurled at the funeral of Don Pino Puglisi the day after his assassination by Cosa Nostra back in September '93. The cruelty, fear, explosions and black mailings would not have lasted long without omertà. As much as we would like to believe it is all adistant memory, our gaze still falls on those staring eyes, enigmatic and threatening.

This is the last photo of the boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, the last known features of a man whose hands are indelibly stained with some of the most inhuman crimes ever committed. The puppetmaster who brought an entire country to its knees, only to disappear into thin air... while still moving the strings? In this work, Nuuco reflects the essence of his thoughts and of the tormented relationship with his native land, in an unceasing and laborious search for the truth. And there are truths in this work: a hundred and none. There is the shouted truth of a crowd, exhausted by torture and silenced in an instant by the truth whispered by the eyes in the photograph. Then there is the historical truth, revealed and absorbed. There is the truth of a past exposed to narrate a present, hidden – once again – by a silence so strong it becomes a deafening howl. "Silence is Mafia" tells of courage and cruelty, passion and fear, freedom and prison, awareness and unconsciousness, cause and effect. A past still too present is now revealed, to change the future.

Sarah Campisi