Terre D'Arneo

Mixed media -Digital drawing on analog photography 2023

The Terre d’Arneo are a vast agricultural area in Salento, Apulia, which until the 1950s was largely marshland and uncultivated. Reclaimed during the Fascist period, the land nevertheless remained in the hands of a small number of large landowners. Between 1949 and 1951, thousands of landless farm workers and peasants rose up to demand the allocation of uncultivated land, giving rise to one of the most significant agrarian protests in Southern Italy.
The symbolic occupation of the Arneo reached its peak in January 1951 and was met with repression, arrests, and trials. Despite this, those struggles led to the inclusion of the area in the agrarian reform, marking a turning point. Today, the Terre d’Arneo still tell a story of resistance, struggle, and collective memory.

The focus of the project is to explore the concept of absence as a void within collective memory—an erasure that distorts our understanding of history. The work reflects on how the lack of documentation and the forgetting of significant events can alter perceptions of the past, producing misunderstandings and fragmented narratives of our historical heritage.
Each photograph, shot on analogue film and personally developed, becomes a visual reflection on places, objects, and forgotten moments, but above all on the people whose struggles and sacrifices have fallen into oblivion.