The exhibition  La memoria degli oggetti. Lampedusa, 3 ottobre 2013. Dieci anni dopo inaugurates Tuesday September 26, at 18 p.m., at  Shoah Memorial in Milan.

This project has received funding  from Otto per Mille dell’Istituto Buddista Italiano Soka Gakkai. The exhibition is a project by  Carta di Roma and Zona, conceived and curated by Paola Barretta, Imma Carpiniello, Valerio Cataldi, Adal Neguse and Giulia Tornari, with photographs by Karim El Maktafi.

Ten years after the shipwreck October 3 2013, 368 people lost their lives off the coast of Lampedusa—women, men, and children who were trying to reach Europe from Eritrea—the exhibition recalles the first great tragedy of the Mediterranean. For the first time, the bodies of the shipwrecked are visible to the world. It is an event that changes the perception of shipwrecks, until then only told through the words of the survivors. An event that triggers an enormous emotional reaction in world public opinion. Since 3 October 2013, there have been over twenty-six thousand deaths, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in a desperate attempt to reach Europe.

On display at the Shoah Memorial, a symbolic place of remembrance, the exhibition, which will be open until October 31, brings together some objects belonging to the migrants and unpublished photographs by Karim El Maktafi, who documented them through still lifes, but also captured the sea and landscapes of Lampedusa, a place symbolic of landing but also of tragedy and shipwreck. He portraits rescuers, such as Giusi Nicolini, former mayor of Lampedusa, and  survivors and victims’ relatives. The exhibition also presents audio recordings of the first rescuers, the sunken boat’s video, and television reports by Valerio Cataldi, the RAI journalist who in December 2013 revealed on TG2 the inhumane treatment of guests at the island’s reception center, the scene of the massacre. The reception centre was then closed. Another protagonist is Adal Neguse, an Eritrean refugee, with his drawings and his story: Abraham’s brother, a victim of the shipwreck, he recounts the atrocities of the torture suffered by young people who try to escape the regime. There is no documentation of the torture, so Adal drew it, and his drawings were acquired as evidence by the United Nations in its resolution condemning the Eritrean regime for crimes against humanity. Today, he is a Swedish citizen.

Shoah Memorial in Milano,
Piazza Edmond J. Safra 1, Milano
26 September – 31 October 2023

Access to the exhibition is included in the entrance ticket to the Memorial:
-€10 full price
– €5 students and over 65
-free people with disabilities and journalists
– €22 family ticket.

The Memorial is open Monday to Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (closed on Fridays). Special opening on the last Friday of the month with free entrance from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

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