Callipari-Marcuzzo: Tracciando fili del passato (Tracing threads of the past)

My grandparents from both sides immigrated to Australia from Calabria in the 1950s. My paternal grandfather, Michele Callipari, left Italy in 1950; my grandmother, Elena Pipicelli, followed in 1951 with their five children: Giuseppe, Antonio (my father), Caterina, Bruno, and Damiano. Two more children, Josephina and Michele, would be born after their arrival. My maternal grandfather, Francesco Cufari, arrived in 1951; my grandmother, Domenica Vaticano, their daughter, Anna (my mother), and son, Bruno, followed in 1954. (Uncle Antonio had arrived earlier in the same year). They left behind their two eldest married children, Giuseppe and Maria.

Like other recently arrived immigrants, my grandparents immersed themselves in the familiar and clung to the customs of their homeland. They placed importance on maintaining traditions because of the belief that back in their place of origin, the same thing was happening. Their new settlements defined their sense of Italianess, as they maintained contact with other paesani, Calabresi and Italiani. Clinging to their culture was their way of preserving it. 

My arts practice is inspired by my Italian heritage. The work investigates, interprets, and translates the experiences of Calabrian settlers to North West Victoria, actively engaging with my familial and feminine history. My research feeds my performances by inspiring the imagined histories embedded within my psyche— imagined because they are partly my concocted version of the realities lived by my grandparents, relatives, and their families.

For example, Tracciando fili del passato (Tracing threads of the past), an ongoing series of live art performances and installations, incorporates my self- transformation into my nonne. During these enactments, I make artefacts using traditional women’s modes of making: sewing, embroidery, and crochet. These activities highlight the significance of women’s handwork, an important aspect of family relationships, passed from mother to daughter. The work is a manifestation of the hopes, dreams, and desires of migrant women, and also, their lived realities. It strives to honour their voices which were often silenced by the dominant gender roles within the Italian Calabrian diaspora.

Tracciando Fili del Passato: cucire (Tracing Threads of the Past: sewing), a live art performance and installation, occupied the window space of The Art Vault gallery in Mildura, Victoria. Dressed in character, I created a wardrobe similar to those my own mother and grandmother made soon after their arrival in Australia. The items were sewn at my mother’s treadle-powered Singer sewing machine. She used the machine to make most of her own and my grandmother’s clothes. To remain authentic, I consulted my mother on some of the things that she and my grandmother made when they first arrived: mutande (underpants), reggipetti (bras), sottovesti (petticoats), grembiuli (aprons, called fardale in Calabrese), camicie (shirts), gonne (skirts), and muccaturi (headscarfs).

During another enactment of Tracciando Fili del Passato, I made an apron (an essential piece of clothing favored by my paternal grandmother, Elena). The apron was created from items collected from relatives in Italy and Australia: my great-aunt Palma, cousins Maria, Erminia, Maria, Teresa, and Carmela, and my mother Anna. All of these elements were combined in my live performance, in which I wore the dress that once belonged to my grandmother, Domenica. I sat at a vintage Singer sewing machine. One long piece of red embroidery cotton completed the apron and linked the two hand-embroidered maps of Italy and Australia. 

My arts practice  integrates elements of co-creation. Tracciando fili del passato combined a piece of my mother Anna’s hand embroidered biancheria (linen), crafted during her pre-teen years in Calabria for her corredo (dowry) before migrating to Australia. My mother began receiving instruction in embroidery from the age of nine in her hometown of Platì, Reggio Calabria. It was the expectation that all girls learn needlework from a young age. The vintage cotton fabric has become very fragile and is now literally threadbare from years of use as a pillowcase. The threads, my own and my mother’s, link us to Calabria and North-West Victoria. The work ties my mother and me together, forming a dialogue between us, further weaving our lives together in a contemporary visual form, and has also reinstated the chain of passing down traditions from mother to daughter .

Calabrian Proverb Drawings

These drawings, from a larger series, are based on the proverbs Callipari-Marcuzzo heard her grandparents say.