Set in the archetypal landscape of the Lucanian “calanchi,” Versus (2024) stages a female procession of care and repair: black cloths weave into the earth’s fissures and into the shadows cast by sunlight, as if to dress and heal the land’s wounds. The performance—recorded in video and photography—is accompanied by a sound tapestry inspired by funeral laments and oral tradition songs collected in Southern Italy by Ernesto De Martino and Diego Carpitella (now held in the Santa Cecilia Academy archives). Born from a shared participatory process, the work involves multiple female presences in a vocal and bodily exploration that culminates at sunset in a collective gesture of offering and openness, where the boundary between self and other becomes permeable and the landscape turns into a space of relation, care, and welcome.

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