Crossing the line. Agustina Fioretti

Crossing the line is a project that enquiries into the different trajectories and the ways to cross the equatorial line. The research is initiated through a family story, when during a boat trip from Buenos Aires to France, the artist’s grandfather is invited to impersonate Neptune in an initiation ritual when they were crossing the equator line. The representation of the ritual, in this case in a festive framework linked to tourism, hid a centenarian tradition of a tortuous sea ritual of strong colonialists and patriarchal content. The ritual implied that, transformed into men, the crew members could face the events that could occur during the trip south. The path south through the equator meant the entrance to a wild territory. How to think, then, an opposite trajectory? How is the crossing from the South to the North produced? Trough different techniques, such as video, photography, archive, testimonies, objects and textiles, the project rebuilds not only the stages of the ritual, but also the work of reparation of the webs that the xarxaires and the illegal immigrants carry out on the harbour of Vilanova i La Geltrú, Catalunya. On the harbour, women who carry out this work which was the only one historically allowed for them live together, alongside with illegal immigrants that, having been fishermen all their lives in their country home, cannot come back to the sea for their law condition.