Sana Sana
Rosa Lacavalla
Nominated by
Der Greif

Sana Sana tells of a journey towards healing that comes from the inside to the outside and the slow and delicate process of recovery from emotional wounds.Sana Sana (Heal Heal) / Colita de rana (Frog’s tail) is repeated like a mantra. Si no sanas hoy (If you don’t heal today) / Sanarás mañana (You will heal tomorrow). These verses are taken from a popular South American chant sung by mothers to comfort their children when they get hurt. A simple song becomes a ritual, born out of love, and its words have acquired a magical belief: if you repeat these verses out loud, you will start to heal.The need to give a visual form to specific feelings and their resolution brings the author to face them and give them a shape, albeit metaphorical. It makes her able to free herself from that weight. For this reason, the images take on different meanings, becoming symbolic translations of feelings, moments of anxiety and comfort, uneasiness and quiet. When we begin to recognize our emotions while we are in the throes of emotional suffering we are already on the way to recovery and it allows us to welcome our feelings with some degree of awareness.Documenting a shamanic rite towards emotional healing and personal growth, the images dance between the subtleties of every day and bring the spectator the comforting feeling of a healing ritual passing by an intricate and often rough path like rock, with the presence of shaded areas, where the cause of the problems and the key to solving them are hidden.Sanarás mañana, she repeats to herself, and there will be no more reason to live this “sad melody”.
The Artist

Rosa Lacavalla
Nominated in
2024
By
Der Greif
Lives and Works in
Bologna, Italy
Rosa Lacavalla (b. 1993) is an Italian photographer and visual artist based in Bologna. She holds a BA in Art Graphic and an MA in Photography from the Academy of Fine Arts Bologna, along with one-year studies in the BA in Photography program at Coventry University, UK, and an internship with the collective Cesura. Her work has been featured in several printed and online publications, and exhibited in festivals, collective and solo shows in Italy and abroad. Since 2023 she's been part of the PhMuseum's team as an Editorial, Production and Education Assistant.
Lacavalla's visual narratives unfold as transformative journeys – whether it is a personal quest for emotional healing or an exploration of cultural intersections and migrations. Navigating the complexities of the human experience, her works invite viewers to reflect on the intricate paths of healing, transformation, and the blurred boundaries between reality and dream.
More projects by this artist
2024
La Festa dell’Equatore
An attempt to mend a piece of sky unfurling over an ocean of me- mories, La Festa Dell’Equatore is an initiatory journey, a crossing of boundaries, an invitation to immerse oneself in a continuous flow of transformations.
The project’s title itself pays homage to a poignant rite of passage that took place aboard steamships transporting migrants to South America. It was a celebratory moment, a communal commemo- ration marking the approach of a new life. However, it was often followed by profound silence, accompanied by eyes filled with tears and a mixture of hopes and nostalgia.
The Equator, that invisible line splitting our planet in two, acts as a symbolic meeting point where people’s paths cross. Connecting imagination and memory, the narration unfolds on three main le- vels. First, it examines how stars move and appear differently from one hemisphere to the other. Second, it delves into the fragmen- ted history of the artist’s husband’s Italo-Argentinian family. Finally, the third level brings these scientific and personal stories together with the concept of family constellations, a therapeutic method that looks at how family patterns and transgenerational traumas affect our lives and relationships, helping us understand how the past and present are linked.
Past and present, reality and dream merge, projecting us towards a future yet to be written, while stars sing from the deep blue of eternity to the soul of the Ocean.
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