The proud and free gaze, sweet and reassuring, aware. Michela Murgia. Those eyes that seem to embrace you as soon as you start to see them on the facade of the Municipio V in Rome, in via di Torre Annunziata. It’s her. The barely visible but present smile that welcomes and reminds, once again, that we must not stop fighting to be what we and no one else want. So Michela Murgia, in the mural created by the faceless street artist Laika and curated by Pietro Turano, vice president of Arcigay Rome continues to unleash wonder. And while the eyes fill with emotion, the words written in his last posthumous novel come to mind Remember me as you like. «Now it’s as if my voice reverberates an echo that continues to resonate even if I’m no longer speaking. Because I’ve generated an identification between what I said and what I was. So it seems that I speak and pronounce myself even when I don’t. I paid for this. With many haters. But it repaid me. If I died tomorrow (and the day of my death is not far away) there are hundreds of people who could stand up and say: “Michela Murgia would say”. Because even if I can’t say it, I said it anyway. There are also commonplaces, stereotypes, clichés – it’s not like you invent something new every time. But something important, in that mass, remains magical, and this makes the difference. I can now allow myself the hegemony of silence because I have spoken for years, a lot.”
And all those words have traced a path that continues to be followed today. From the grandmothers who accompanied their granddaughters in front of Municipio V with their hands raised towards the mural almost as if they wanted to touch it, from the students who came here to say that the neighborhood belongs to those who live there and not to those who want to exploit it for their own political seat (like the Pro Vita associations that criticized the choice of the mural), from the curious who pass by and stop to listen. “In the last book in a chapter she says ‘I’m a mythomaniac’: I stop and there’s this mural”, she smiles Lorenzo Terenzi, Michela Murgia’s husband, while with great emotion he approaches the microphone and begins to speak. «I think she would have liked it very much. It is a work that speaks to people. This photo was chosen, which I adore and which I was lucky enough to take, obviously under very strict instructions from Michela while we were on the Orient Express.. I like it because it is the photo of a person who is not ashamed of being herself despite the illness, despite everything others think. So my dream would be that people when they pass by here and see this mural instead of saying “I’m not like her”, “she was better”, “I will never be able to”, is that they look inside themselves a little and try to find their own self, to develop it, to have the strength to be themselves and do everything that makes them feel good while respecting others. Because if it makes you feel good, it’s never wrong.».
Michela Murgia shines on Rome and the sun of this day when the mural is inaugurated shines very brightly. Forty degrees in the midst of all the energy that is always released around Michela Murgia. There is so much emotion because those who have felt a bit orphaned since the day of her death, last August 10, in front of this mural seem to feel the embrace that was missing again. There is the secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, she does not stop looking up, towards those 100 square meters of mural from which Murgia smiles strongly. Today more than ever. “Beyond hatred there is beauty and freedom that we practice at all costs”, says Pietro Turano who, together with Laika and the institutions, made all this possible. “They said that it is inappropriate to use a public good for these works but perhaps they misunderstand the meaning of common good, or good that belongs to the community. These are our spaces and these are our lives, they belong to us and we are reclaiming it.”
And this is also the key to making noise in a constructive way, taking a stand not only on social media but with concrete actions. “At a time when the right is taking all this power and also in a very aggressive way,” continues Turano, “in my opinion we must give the signal that the space belongs to the city and not to whoever sits in an armchair at that moment. That’s why we decided to do this mural on a public wall and in a completely legal way. It was Laika who told me that she had wanted to do something for Michela Murgia for a long time and that’s how all this was born. At the time I was shocked because it seemed like something too big for me, I was afraid of doing something wrong, it also involved me emotionally, but once this thing was verbalized I could no longer ignore it. The first thing I did was call Chiara Valerio directly from under her house, then we called the rest of Michela’s family and when I understood that there was enthusiasm I said okay. I believe that under the sign of love you can do many things, so we believed in it and we did it”.
Municipio V of Rome tells the story of a part of the capital that is very active both in terms of rights, of the lgbtq+ community but also in terms of art. «This work is not a holy card, but a gift to the community and the city, to celebrate together a woman who gave us tools and new lenses to read our reality and orient ourselves. I think that Rome had to pay homage to Michela because this was in all respects her city and I think that the city still needed Michela.to be able to see it. The idea that every morning the kids from the schools around here can see it, as well as all the workers who enter the Town Hall, the asylum seekers, all the people who pass by here remember that they are bearers of rights. Finally, with this authorization the institutions are taking on a responsibility towards them, having this image on their facade means saying “we are here”. And there are many of us. «We are the tide, we are millions»remembers the artist Laika. «Today we celebrate Michela and her thoughts, a woman who deserves more than this wall, she was not only a voice but she left us an important spiritual legacy, we must treasure it for the future. They say that Michela is a divisive character, I agree, I am too, for fascists and for those who want to impose their medieval beliefs trampling on the rights of millions of people».
Source: Vanity Fair
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