Sea of Promises is an art piece originally created as an installation for the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles (IAMLA), it was my tribute to Sacco and Vanzetti. When Marianna Gatto director of the museum and curator of the exhibition , invited me to be part of Italianità, an exhibition exploring the Italian diaspora, my thoughts immediately turned to the waves of Italian immigrants who arrived in America at the turn of the 20th century.
But Sea of Promises extends beyond a single migration story, it speaks to the universal experience of displacement, transcending time, identity, place, ethnicity, and race. I wanted to create a piece that embodied both the nurturing embrace and the vulnerability of the immigrant journey. The boat in my installation represents this duality: a nest that cradles and protects, yet also a fragile vessel carrying human lives across treacherous waters.
Unfortunately, even today, such precarious boats remain a tragic reality, symbols of desperation, sacrifice, and the perilous search for a better future. My work reflects not only the Italian diaspora but also the countless individuals around the world who are forced to flee their homelands due to poverty, violence and war. The crisis in the Mediterranean, where overcrowded boats become sites of danger, suffering, and loss, echoes this ongoing struggle.
Sea of Promises is a vessel of memory, resilience, and endurance. It holds within it the courage, pain, and determination of those who embark on these perilous journeys. The red roses inside the boat symbolize both hope for a new life and the profound sorrow of leaving behind one’s home, family, and loved ones. It is a bittersweet experience—one of both possibility and heartbreak.
In 2020, during the global pandemic, I transformed the installation into a series of prints. The themes of Sea of Promises—hope, loss, and survival resonated deeply with that moment in history. I added a new inscription to the artwork:
“When a boat crosses the sea and the storm, from afar we fear, the strength to survive is all that we need.”
Today, I am honored that this piece continues to find new audiences and meaning. Santa Monica Cultural Affairs selected “Sea of Promises” for display as large scale banner alongside Santa Monica Airport.
ATLANTE DELL’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA NELL’AREA DEL MEDITERRANEO by Patrizia Mania
Read the article
DAWNTOWN LOS ANGELES
A DIVERSE DISPLAY OF UNITY AT ITALIAN AMERICAN MUSEUM
by Nicholas Slayton
DTLA - What does it mean to be part of a diaspora, to straddle the line between two cultures?
Artists are among the many who have tried to answer the question, taking a creative approach to the struggles of assimilating in a new country while hanging on to one’s heritage. The idea again comes to the forefront at the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles, where an eclectic new exhibition digs into and reflects on the immigrant experience.
Works from almost two dozen artists of Italian descent are collected in the show that opened last month at the museum at El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. Italianitá: Italian Diaspora Artists Examine Identity, which runs through Jan. 13, focuses on artists tied to the Italian diaspora, which spread out of the country in the 1800s and 1900s.
The 21 pieces vary in style and medium, but are united by a shared background. Many works directly address the immigrant experience, among them photos of Boston’s Little Italy neighborhood and a painting of an early 20th century mill and factory where Italian immigrants worked. Arranged without a focus on chronology or form, the IAMLA uses the tight space of the two rooms to make an almost immersive experience.
The majority of visitors to the 2-year-old museum, which is housed in the refurbished 1908 Italian Hall, are not of Italian descent, according to museum Executive Director Marianna Gatto. So Italianitá came out of a desire to show audiences what “Italianness” (the English translation of “Italianitá”) can mean.
“Like any immigrant experience, it’s dependent on generation, on time and place, and socioeconomic background. We were interested in exploring that idea, to perhaps aide in the discovery of what the Italian hyphenated experience is,” Gatto said. “All these artists were born in Italy and left, or are the children, grandchildren or great grandchildren of Italians who left and went elsewhere.”
Inherent to the show is a diversity in experience and medium. That is seen in the contribution from Luci Callipari-Marcuzzo, an Australian artist whose needlepoint work is mounted on a wall across from a giant swooping hawk fashioned from recycled plastics. The latter piece, part of Cynthia Minet’s “Unsustainable Creatures” series, examines the environmental impact of waste and how birds of prey are domesticated by humans, but still a bit wild. Minet chose to include it in Italianitá after seeing a different type of migration into the United States.
“I was visiting McCallan, Texas, and there was a migration of 100,000 hawks passing overhead,” the Downtown-based artist said. “This piece is about how people move. It ties beautifully into the Italianitá show.”
One of the most striking works in the exhibition is Luigia Martelloni’s “Sea of Promises,” a large rowboat set up in the middle of the main room. Draped in red, with roses inside, it’s an ode to the dreams that fuel migration and the tragedy that can come from the journey. Created this year, it represents both Italians who left the country in the late 1800s and the modern migrants seeking to reach Italy from the Middle East and North Africa. The journey to Europe is treacherous, with numerous reports documenting accidents and deaths as people cross the Mediterranean.
Another highlight is Joseph Stella’s “Smoke Stacks.” The 1935 futurist-style painting is mounted above a fireplace. The stark, seemingly simple image of smokestacks comes to vivid, hypnotic life thanks to rust-like reds and a hazy blue sky.
Gatto said the museum secured contributions to the show from a variety of sources. She said she had some artists, such as Stella, in mind, and put out an open call seeking additional work. Callipari-Marcuzzo was one of the artists who responded, and contributed her needlepoint work that was inspired by her family’s background in Calabria, in the southern part of Italy.
“I have a strong connection to my Italian heritage. My grandparents immigrated to Australia in the 1950s from Reggio Calabria to make a new life for their families,” Callipari-Marcuzzo said by email from her home in Mildura, Australia.
The show has a loose arrangement that allowed the artists or their estates to choose works that go beyond what audiences might think of as “Italian” or focused on a diaspora. The diversity of style helps make each work stand out inside the tight space.
Minet said that part of the experience is seeing what other artists contributed and why. She pointed to “Sea of Promises” as a highlight, and said she is fascinated by David Trulli’s “Escape Artist,” a scratchboard image of a being in an untethered spacesuit.
Gatto said the diversity of the show reflects what it means to be part of an immigrant community, and to deal with different and new environments.
“This is the immigrant experience. Whether they’re Italian, Jewish, or Latino, people leave where they’re from and go somewhere else in search of a better life,” Gatto said. “We want people to walk away thinking, ‘I’m not Italian, but that’s the experience my grandmother had.’”