Rosa Lacavalla

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”.‍‍

La Festa dell’Equatore is a symbolic crossing that weaves together the celestial shift of the stars, the fragmented history of the artist’s Italo-Argentine family, and the therapeutic practice of family constellations to unfold a timeless dialogue between personal memory and the collective journey of migration. An attempt to mend a piece of sky unfurling over an ocean of memories, the work is an initiatory journey. The title pays homage to a poignant rite of passage once held aboard steamships transporting migrants to South America. Crossing the Equator was a celebratory moment marking the approach of a new life, yet it was often followed by a profound silence, accompanied by eyes filled with tears and a mixture of hope and nostalgia. That invisible line splitting our planet in two serves as the symbolic meeting point where these different paths intersect. Within this space, the narration unfolds through three deeply interconnected layers that mirror the migrant’s own disorientation and discovery. It begins with the celestial, observing how the vault of heaven shifts as one crosses the line, with stars appearing in patterns unfamiliar to the other hemisphere. This shift finds its grounded counterpart in the familial lineage of the artist’s husband’s family, a journey through fragmented memories and recovered legacies. Finally, these stories are brought into a psychological dimension through family constellations, a method that reveals how transgenerational patterns are etched into our lives – much like stars in the night sky – linking our ancestors' past to our present. Here, memory and myth merge with reality, projecting us toward a future yet to be written while stars sing from the deep blue of eternity to the soul of the Ocean. Adopting a transmedia narrative format, the work combines photography, video, audio recordings, found footage, and archival materials. The Crossing Ceremony is a single-channel video installation that binds found footage of the Equator line-crossing rituals – both vintage and contemporary – with evocative imagery of "moving stars." The work invites viewers to embark on a voyage alongside King Neptune, the revered guardian of the oceans, as he prepares for the crossing of the Equator Line. As the narrative shifts into an introspective second act, it metaphorically depicts the challenges of the journey and the profound symbolism of traversing an invisible threshold, forever intertwined with the shifting patterns of the night sky.