A day to remember

A Day to Remember is part of my series Legati al dito, which are paintings in which i revisit memories that left a lasting imprint. This painting recalls an incident in Bolzano, the city where I was born and spent much of my life at.

Just days before the national election, I had a briefing about my job for RAI on the exit polls and after the meeting as I walking past the public park near the train station, a space central to the city often stigmatized in political discourse, I was harassed by a man in a green hoodie with Lega Nord written on it, wearing the party’s green scarf. From across the path he shouted at me: “Tornatene a casa” — “Go back to your country.” His words then sparked a chorus from others nearby, also supporters attending the party’s pre-election propaganda event, who harrased me additionally. I don’t remember every insult, but his one was the one that ignited the moment and lodged itself permanently in my memory.

This was not just a personal attack, but also a kind of public performance. Right-wing politicians had long described this park as the “epicenter of evil”, unsafe and unwanted because of its proximity to the station and the presence of migrants, homeless people or just young individuals simply spending their leisure time there. This right wing political claimed this park “ruined” the image of the city for tourists. Yet it was never those so-called “dangerous” figures who harassed me but, in paradox, the party members themselves, standing in that park with their symbols and slogans, who enacted the very violence they claimed to oppose.

A Day to Remember is my way to transforms this traumatic encounter into an image that resists erasure. It marks the contradiction of being told to leave a city or coutry that is my home and the way propaganda weaponizes space, memory and belonging despite reality.