Cagliari

The students drew lives and places, putting pieces together and, together, building up a mosaic of life in Sardinia. Places are constructed by the people who shape them, with past and present intertwined, as well as here and elsewhere.

Caterina’s family, like many others was caught up in patterns of migration, exile and return, between the island and the “so-called continent”, mainland Italy across the sea.

Maria Francesca portrayed this pull and push of places beautifully, with lives and loves built between and across the page, woven together visually. We are shaped by travel, as well as by being rooted somewhere, if only for a time.

Moving to new places, while remaining connected to the places left behind is a delicate balance. Eleonora portrays how movement, exile and connection shapes the present. The past does not disappear, and can be shared, even if we inexorably live in the here and now.

This connection to the past, to families and place-based practices, is also expressed in Elisa’s simple portrayal of the fundamental experience of place rooted in sharing good food, made carefully and skillfully by family members. Baking bread in a traditional oven and tasting it together, as an expression of place. Can you smell the goodness?

This connection to place is also rooted in ceremonies, in rituals given meaning over time, connecting people and places, as Marta reminds us with her portrayal of the Sant’Efisio ceremony that takes places every year in Cagliari. The connection between a saint, a place and a people is both rooted in the past and constantly reinvented, as tourist experience, religious moment and political expression. Saints, elected officials, people and animals redrawing place in a joyous and colourful moment.

This event is also portrayed by Erica who shares this festival in a discussion with her grandmother, who remembers her own father’s connection to it. Places connected across time, made alive through memories.

The feast of Sant’Efisio also features in Giulia’s short comic, reminding us that while certain presences in the city – such as horses and costumed groups of people – may seem familiar to some, these only make fully sense when the context is explained to incomers. Places are explained and narrated, creating new connections.

But Sardinia is not only made by those rooted in place through the generations, but is also made up of those who chose to bring their life experiences and skills to the island, facing exile of a different kind. For a land used to losing inhabitants to elsewhere, these incoming migrants are precious sources of knowledge and labour. But adapting to a new place in which to live isn’t always easy, as Simonetta’s sensitive portrayal reminds us. New connections are created as new inhabitants build a new life somewhere. Life, wherever we end up living, is always about juggling constraints and demands.

The places we inhabit are also imbued with mystery, with haunting figures and ghosts of the past and present. Francesco’s haunting work of love and haunting shadows reminds us that cities, and urban experience, always have a ghostly side, and the experiences we have remain unknowable.