Diritto di sangue — Rovescio di sangue: An Exhibit About Citizenship by Marina Sagona, curated by Teresa Fiore (Oct.-Dec. 2025)

Diritto di sangue — Rovescio di sangue: An Exhibit About Citizenship by Marina Sagona (curated by Teresa Fiore)

Ex-carcere di Agrigento/Former Prison of Agrigento (Via S. Vito, 45, 92100 Agrigento, Italia)
Oct. 31 – Nov. 28, 2025 (EXTENDED THROUGH 31 DECEMBER) FULL DESCRIPTION IN ITALIAN

Diritto di sangue/Rovescio di sangue (roughly translated as Right of Blood/Wrong of Blood) is an exhibit by New York- and Rome-based artist Marina Sagona encompassing 14 prints with paint touch-ups and a 20-minute video with interviews with people who have obtained or would like to obtain Italian citizenship. The exhibit addresses the contradictions of the Italian citizenship law by highlighting how it is available by right to Italian descendants living abroad, even though they have vague or absent ties to the Italian language and culture, while it is challenging to obtain for immigrants living and working steadily in Italy or their children born in Italy. Using as a background the notion of circularity of migration from/to Italy developed by Teresa Fiore in her research, the exhibit adopts the perspective of the artist herself as an U.S.-naturalized Italian citizen.

Marina Sagona (Rome, 1967) is an Italian-American multimedia artist. After her studies in Rome, she was an assistant to artist Mario Schifano. In 1995, she moved to New York, where she began working as a illustrator for The New York Times and The New Yorker; directed the contemporary art department at FIAC (Foundation for Italian Art and Culture); and o-curated the exhibition Dante Ferretti: Design and Construction for the Cinema at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in 2014. She was an artist in residence in Galatina (Domus, 2019) and Barcelona (Chiquita Room Gallery, 2021). Sagona’s work is expressed through diverse media such as video, sculpture, and installation, and her artistic journey focuses on the dynamics of communication, shared identity, and the collective unconscious (see her audiovisual works: Stabat Mater, Self-Portrait and Your Dream Is My Dream). 

Teresa Fiore is Professor of Italian and Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies at Montclair State University, New Jersey. The recipient of several fellowships (De Bosis, Rockefeller, Fulbright), she has held Visiting positions at Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Rutgers University. She is the author of the pluri-awarded book Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (Fordham UP, 2017), the co-editor of the section “Italy and the Euro-Mediterranean ‘Migrant Crisis’” in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies (2018), and numerous articles on migration to/from Italy.

Diritto di sangue–Rovescio di sangue is included in a broader project called SPONDE, as part of Agrigento Capitale della Cultura 2025, with the support of the Italian Ministry of Culture, Agrigento Capitale Foundation, the Region of Sicily, the Municipality of Agrigento, and the Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies at Montclair State University, with the hospitality of Farm Cultural Park, and the collaboration of Caritas di Agrigento, Scaro and Local Impact.