Italy - Lissone

Not the usual “small market” of typical objects (even if fair-trade products and oranges grown in estates confiscated to the mafia by the Italian Government are on sale) but a journey planned to make people reflect on a story: a very simple and real life experience of a common African woman.<br />Ata Alice (“Grandmother” Alice) is an old woman living in a village belonging to the Betharranite mission of Bouar-Niem, in the Central Africana Republic. AIDS killed her daughter and her son-in-law, and Ata Alice is the only one to fend for her three grandchildren. She did not lose heart and, in spite of her old age, she took again to manufacturing terracotta jars following the special technique she had learnt when she was young; just three or four a week and she sells them at the market for next to nothing and earns a living for herself and her grandchildren.<br />The exhibition tells the story of one of these jars, through the beautiful photos taken by father Beniamino Gusmeroli, and slowly leads the visitor to appreciate a simple and fragile object in itself, but very precious because it is the symbol of the desire of liberation not only of Ata Alice, but of the whole African Continent, that fights for life by creating something beautiful.<br /><br />