SORGIVA
SORGIVA
A ritual of metamorphosis, listening, and reconnection.
A body woven with earth, water and memory.
A sacred gesture bridging past and present.
Sorgiva is a ritual of transition, an act of listening and metamorphosis performed at the threshold between departure and belonging.
Wearing a hand-sewn ritual mask—made from sheets and curtains from the childhood home—the body becomes a vessel of memory, moving through six landscapes of Salento marked by silence and beauty.
An empty playground, a pagghiara, a field of dead olive trees, a forgotten tree-lined avenue, a hidden path through spiders and thorny vegetation and finally a basin of water opening to the sea: each place acts as a station of an initiatory journey.
The sickened olive trees, bearing the marks of Xylella, mirror the inner wounds I carry; moving through them becomes a gesture of accompaniment and healing—both of the land and the self.
Walking blindly, deprived of sight and partially of hearing, turns into a gesture of surrender and trust, a way to listen with the breath and the ground beneath the feet.
The ritual culminates in the sea, where the garment dissolves into the waves like a silent offering—neither an ending nor a farewell, but a passage. Water becomes a portal that washes and transforms.
Sorgiva is an act of care for the inner child, a return to a primal and tender self, capable of wonder even in moments of rupture. It embodies a feminine force that draws from ancestral memories and turns them into gestures of healing and renewal.
Stage I - The Abandoned Playground
The ghost of play
Stage II - La Pagghiara/The Stone Hut
The ritual begins here, among rusted memories and silent echoes.
Eyes closed, the body listens through skin and balance—each step a question to the space, each breath a way to feel without seeing.
Somewhere in the stillness,the child I once was walks beside me—watching, guiding, remembering how to wonder.
Where the body becomes shelter
The hut is heavy with stillness.
Its dry stone walls hold everything in—like a body that keeps too much inside.
The silence is thick, immobile, weighty.
There is no gesture here, only the pressure of what remains unspoken.
The earth presses against my heels and I wait.
Contained, enclosed, almost buried—but listening.
Stage III - Field of dead olive trees
Among the ruins of what once rooted, a body remembers how to move through the orchard of ghosts.
The trees stand like phantoms—silent witnesses to something lost and unresolved.
Their twisted trunks open a path of absence.
I walk through them slowly, feeling their voids with my skin.
Then I dance—a raw, ancestral force rising from within.
Each movement cracks open what I’ve held inside.
It’s not just mourning.
It’s the moment I begin to know: I no longer want to carry the weight the world placed on me.
Among the dead, I choose to move.
Each gesture becomes an act of refusal—and the first spark of freedom.
Stage IV - The Tree-Lined Avenue
A journey of resistance, breath, and becoming
I walk blind through the wind.
The path is long and exposed, lined with trees that offer no shelter.
Each step pulls something buried to the surface.
The body aches. The breath labors.
I don’t know how far I’ve gone—only that I’m still going.
And then, a pause. A breath rises—deep, sharp, full. Release.
It’s the walk of a life: not fast, not easy—but real. And somewhere along it,I begin to recognize myself.
Stage V – The Hidden Path
A silent struggle through tangled grace.
Stage VI – The Water Basin
I walk through thorns, stones and silence.
The fabric of my dress catches on branches, slows me down.
The ground is rough, unpredictable.
I cannot see. I cannot hear.
And yet—there is beauty here.
Not the kind you admire from above,but the kind you feel when you’re inside it.
Each step is a conversation between my body and the world.
It scratches me, holds me, resists me, but it also reveals itself—wild, imperfect, real.
There’s only me and this path, and for a moment, that's enough.
Where the gesture dissolves into the sea
Fresh water flows beside me, quiet and clear, carving its way toward the sea.
I walk with it, step after step, as if we share the same path—drawn by gravity,
by something we cannot resist.
Then the land disappears.
Salt meets sweetness.
I enter the water.
My body softens.
The fabric releases.
What was held, now surrenders.
No need to hold on.
The sea accepts without question.
This is not an end,but a merging.
A gentle crossing between what I was and what I’m ready to become.
Salt meets sweetness.
I enter the water.
My body softens.
The fabric releases.
What was held, now surrenders.
No need to hold on.
The sea accepts without question.
This is not an end, but a merging.
A gentle crossing between what I was and what I’m ready to become.
The full video of Sorgiva will be released on Vimeo in December 2025.