“SEGA LA VECCHIA”

SAW THE OLD WOMAN (…) “Sega la vecchia” one of the most interesting and complex manifestations produced by the rural subaltern culture of Umbria, now in disuse, at least in its traditional forms, since the early sixties of the last century. The “Sega la vecchia”, as it is configured in the western part of the regional territory, consists of an itinerant representation with begging, carried out in the period of half Lent by teams each made up of fifteen to twenty young male peasants: each team he moves from cottage to cottage repeatedly staging his show until dawn and getting eggs and wine in exchange. (…) * from “Sega, seghin, segamo … Studies and research on” Sega la vecchia / G.Baronti, G.Palombini, D.Parbuono / Morlacchi Publisher According to anthropologists Baldini and Bellosi, the Old Woman is the symbol of the Earth which reopens after the frost of winter and prepares to produce its fruits and the cut produced in the belly of the Old Woman evokes the birth of the earth pregnant with future crops. Susanna Cati’s work is inspired by this tradition spread in different variations throughout the Umbrian territory. His research investigates the matrices of the cultural identity of the territories through the study of folklore and popular rites, returning a synthesis that combines past, present and future in the work of art. The artist wonders about the consequences of the loss of a collective memory of shared experiences within the communities and the effect resulting from this impoverishment in the training processes of the new generations. In his works in the display case, Cati gives shape to the essence of the value system at the root of the different expressions of local popular culture in the most diverse places in the world, reinterpreting their symbols and meanings in a contemporary key. Thus in this work the oak – or the Old One – is represented as a cornucopia overflowing with fruits that are no longer the crops of the fields of ancient peasant civilization but the key words of our contemporaneity. The urgency of preserving and transmitting the living memory of who we have been and where we come from is all the more necessary as humanity moves towards a globalization that also passes through the new codes of the virtual; a wealth of knowledge and experience that informs, nourishes and enriches the awareness of who we are and where we are going.(B.Pavan)