THE WEARY GOAT

The project aims to foster dialogue and connection with the Romani culture, moving past the long-standing stereotypes that have historically defined these people and their history. Through photographic documentation and video production, the project tracked several informal settlements in the eastern outskirts of Milan starting in 2018, documenting life within the temporary camps up until the final evictions in 2020.

The narrative consists of a medium-format (4.5x6 cm) color film photographic series and a feature-length film. The goal is not to definitively piece together the identity of a culture as diverse as it is complex—as it would be impossible to encapsulate the entire constellation of Romani and Sinti groups and their fluid presence as both communities and individuals. Rather, the project seeks to safeguard specific fragments of their collective memory. The artist successfully engaged members of the community in creating twenty pages of collaborative writing, authored by Corabia Pana, Souraji Smoachina, and Leon Gouda.

In this way, The Weary Goat challenges the collective imagination that cinema and fiction have helped shape surrounding this culture. It seeks to provide a deeper understanding of an identity that, to this day, remains absent from official history textbooks.