Cenere e Bouquet eterno (Magra e luttuosa) | Lucia Leuci

«But because she who spinneth day and night
For him had not yet drawn the distaff off,
Which Clotho lays for each one and compacts […]»
Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatory, XXI Canto, 25-27

The Quarantana belongs to the popular tradition of Southern Italy, later Christianised, and flaunts symbolic elements that characterise the passing of time, dedication to work and the rules imposed by a religion to which this female character belongs.
Her name probably derives from the French word “Carême”, Lent, and she is synonymous with sadness, meditation and prayer.

The Lenten period has since been ferried into the contemporary, and inevitably renewed, marked by new rituals, rhythms, symbolism and ceremonies.
She, my “Cenere”, lands in the contemporary, defying the laws of time, no longer an ancient sundial, but neither a Rollie (a slang term used by rappers to indicate Rolex watches) and hence to keep track of time.

Her presence comforts us, making us steadfast in ancient traditions, but her free swaying beckons the idea of a transformative future where everything becomes fluid and rootless, where myth gives way to the superfluous and the epiphany of an ageless age disrupts and rejects the boundaries of time.

«Mary, you’re shedding too many tears to bewail

just the image of an agony:

you know that, on the third day,your son will come back to life»
Fabrizio De Andrè, Tre Madri (Three Mothers)

«I am unhappy by profession

I dream that I am dead, my body in the street, the procession

[...]

Kill me and resurrect me as with Lazarus

Give me everything in its purest state

More than a dark dress

Than a promising future»

Guè feat. Marracash, Brivido (Shiver)

The Lenten period has since been ferried into the contemporary, and inevitably renewed, marked by new rituals, rhythms, symbolism and ceremonies.

She, my “Cenere”,  lands in the contemporary, defying the laws of time, no longer an ancient sundial, but neither a Rollie (a slang term used by rappers to indicate Rolex watches) and hence to keep track of time. 

Setting off from the past, she reinvents herself by giving voice to what she has been and what she is now: a youthful, ageless, empowered woman, an ever-evolving Arabian Phoenix.

Her face is framed by superb hair and her expression is dismayed just like that of the Lady of Sorrow (Madonna Addolorata in Italian). In an obvious parallel, woe transpires from the faces of both: that of the Madonna is given by the seven sorrows/daggers transfixing her heart, while the painful expression of my work comes from the seven feathers that pierce an orange made in resin, recalling the ineluctable passing of time. 

The spindle, also used by Clotho, one of the three Greek Fates, symbolises the spinning of men's destiny, yet also recalls the hard work of women, sometimes dignified, sometimes not.

«Time flies

Don't bother 

Everybody only lives once

[...]

My clock is stuck, no more tick tock

Let me take a break, it's fair

Look outside at the masses rushing

and if you’re late no one will wait for you»

Fabri Fibra, Il Tempo Vola (Time flies)

«And today I won’t get lost, oh

because I have no, no more time (that’s important)»

Marracash, Importante (Important)

Her face is framed by superb hair and her expression is dismayed just like that of the Lady of Sorrow (Madonna Addolorata in Italian). In an obvious parallel, woe transpires from the faces of both: that of the Madonna is given by the seven sorrows/daggers transfixing her heart, while the painful expression of my work comes from the seven feathers that pierce an orange made in resin, recalling the ineluctable passing of time. 

The spindle, also used by Clotho, one of the three Greek Fates, symbolises the spinning of men's destiny, yet also recalls the hard work of women, sometimes dignified, sometimes not.

The tail of a fish is a reminder of another traditional symbol of this tradition. The fish, which stands for the abstinence to be compulsorily observed during Carnival (i.e. Carnem Levare, lit. meaning to remove meat). The tail encloses hyaline quartz rods that serve to purify flesh and soul. 

Today’s lie is to believe that only an air purifier - perhaps even with flavours - is needed to create well-being and cosmic equilibrium.

But the most emblematic symbol remains her, my “Cenere”, that meagre and mournful figure lives ‘the street’. She is a rapper rapping punchlines from her stage, she is able to spring fiercely into modernity, where stories unexpectedly intertwine, where uncertainties cluster in non-places. However, the need and search for human truth remain strong and imperishable.

I think of my grandfather and his need for knowledge and freedom, and when, not yet of age, he came to Milan in search of a better life. I wonder about the places he lived. Always seeking for the essential and the beauty in simple things, who knows what he might have thought when he first saw the Art Nouveau windows, so decorative, with their designs so complex.

He was leaving a small town in Apulia where life was punctuated by hours of sweat in the fields, anger, and injustice, but also by Catholic traditions that seemed like pointless rituals to him.

In this big city it is easy to get lost, because you are nobody's child, but my grandfather held the sacred of his ancestors enclosed in his eyes. 

In my stained-glass window, the figure of the Quarantana, sad and withered, is just like him: both bear the signs of a Milanese industriousness that unites, with a thread, the needs and necessities of those people who sought a new world of honesty, justice and social redemption.

Translation by Sara Barsotti