Elisa Giardina Papa

Considered to be at once heretical and magical healers, the ‘donne di fora’ defied simple categorization, believed to embody a range of opposing qualities – feminine and masculine; human and animal; benevolent and vengeful.

Giardina Papa reimagines the ‘donne di fora’ as teenage ‘tuners’, young women who ride through the seemingly abandoned utopian urban landscape of Gibellina Nuova in the west of Sicily, on their bikes customised with powerful sound systems. Drawing on songs and stories told by the artist’s grandmother, as well as 16^th and 17^th century archival material from the Spanish Inquisition, U Scantu intersperses scenes of the modern-day tuners with poetic text and visual motifs from a 19th century collection of Sicilian fairy tales.

Ducks feet and thick ceramic braids growing out of the walls and speakers reference the magical powers of the ‘donne di fora’. Running around the walls of the gallery, a text work quotes from the New York poet, Megan Fernandes, who together with composer and performer duendita, have collaborated with the artist on the lyrical and sound composition.

First exhibited at the 2022 Venice Biennale, the work finds new resonance in the architecture of the City Dome Gallery and Collective’s home on Calton Hill. Robert Louis Stevenson references ‘witch’ burnings taking place on the north side of Calton Hill ‘in former days’. In more recent centuries, the hill has become a welcoming landscape for the magical and unruly, occasional haunt for joy riders, and host to Beltane, the contemporary reimagining of the ancient Celtic May Day fire festival which celebrates the return of summer.

“U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale was the first solo presentation in the UK of Sicilian artist Elisa Giardina Papa, whose work had recently been presented at the Venice Biennale, MoMA and the Whitney Museum.