U carrettu
€460,00
Description by the artist
This artwork is called U carrettu (Sicilian for the cart). My shawls want to tell about my land, Sicily, with all its contrasts of colors and emotions. They are triangular, like the representation of the Trinacria, Etna, the ancient goddesses who inhabited it. They are black, like the volcanic ash of Etna. They are colored with flowers and gaudy ornaments. They have been wrapping and protecting women from cold and bad weather for thousands of years, the shawls of Sicily, attract the eyes, and at the same time protect them, in a perpetual balance, reminding us that here the Past and the Present, Light and Darkness, Life and Death meet and us women, always, create knots in order not to forget and be reborn. Front and back the same.
Details and dimensions
The artwork in the Sicilian culture
The ancient art of crochet reminds us of our grandmothers, reminds us of a Sicily that has always existed and that you can still admire both in large and, above all, in small towns, where women, sitting outside the door of the house, sew and talk, talk and sew, as hundreds of years ago. Sicilian embroideries have always been among the most beautiful in the world.
U carrettu siciliano was the means of transport par excellence in the past centuries of the Sicilian people: both rich and poor. Basically it is a sort of wooden wheelbarrow pulled by horses. The peculiarity of the Sicilian cart was given by the sides of this structure, the sides, in which was almost always represented a scene of the Opera of the Puppets, representation of Sicilian puppets extremely popular since the seventeenth century (the cart itself was born around that time). Also, the cart was often very colorful in all its spaces, whether it was wheels, lateral woods, rods, etc.. Even the horse that pulled it, usually festive, was harnessed with bright colors. Needless to say, its more or less artistic opulence marked its social status.
(photo) Sicilian women, early XX century