Sicilia. The passenger.
Looking at a map, an island gives us the illusion of being a small world unto itself. With its borders clearly delineated, it seems to contain a society impervious to the passage of time and seasons, more immediate to decipher because it is sheltered from the changing complexity of the world. But this is a mystification, all the more so if - like Sicily - it lives under the shelter of one of the most overpowering and unbreakable imaginaries that such a small place has ever managed to create. Behind the island “constructed and reconstructed by books, films, paintings, and black and white photography” today there is a new one, hidden, but no less real. The urban and metropolitan one, the one of landings, the one of wine and tropical fruit. A Sicily sometimes as invisible as the poisons that Europe's second largest petrochemical hub dumps into the sea and into the air. Like the migrants arriving in Lampedusa, kept at a distance from the trajectories of tourists and locals. Like the population outflows that give it the sad record among Italian regions for emigration. A place where extremes coexist, like the downtown neighborhoods in Palermo, where the capital of culture vibrates and the invisible city of crack thrives. Sicily where climate change is transforming the agricultural landscape increasingly at risk of flooding and desertification, and someone is taking advantage of this to replace vines with coffee and avocados. Far from trying to explain it, the pages that follow collect postcards from this new Sicily.They are blurry images, because the subject is in great motion.Because Sicily also moves and, yes, changes.