PROJECT BY ARIANNA TODISCO

“Caminanti,” derived from the Sicilian term “chiddi ca caminanu(?)” meaning “walkers.” A photograph about an invisible group of Sicilian nomads in Noto, Sicily. Balloons is the latest legacy of this community. A work about the descendants of the nomads who landed in Sicily at the end of the fourteenth century, following the Arberes’h refugees, the Caminanti have kept their original family organization intact, under the leadership of an older group leader and with marriages established within the community, one big family. The Caminanti are a people within a people, in their gestures transpire the traits of passionate Sicilian theatricality, but their spirit is nomadic. As a result of the pandemic, their wandering spirit is fading, but their tradition of selling balloons, a symbol of ephemeral freedom, remains intact.