The Italian American Museum invites you to a photo presentation of a Fulbright project titled, “Festa, Family and Food.” Please join us as Fulbright scholar Stephanie Trudeau presents a lecture with power point presentation on the history and cultural significance of three saints’ festivals celebrated in Italy and in Italian-American communities.
About the Presentation:
The photographs in this presentation represent an examination of the evolution and continuity of the cultural traditions of three saints’ feasts, the Gigli in Nola, the Ceri in Gubbio and St. Joseph’s feast in Salemi, Sicily. These festivals unite their communities in creative, cooperative effort toward a common goal and the feasts’ artwork, music and celebratory foods illustrate and symbolize their historical tales of heroic sacrifice and redemption. The enduring strength of these feasts is possibly because they reinforce the pride and identity of the citizens of communities so impoverished in the past that it gave impetus to the Italian diaspora of the late 19th century. The feasts celebrate suffering, rejoicing and survival, and their folk art serves to reshape historical narratives and social identities in a modern society. This nine-month research project examined the evolution of these feasts from pagan rites to Christian celebrations, their artwork combining contemporary design with the baroque, all serving as expressions of cultural identity.
The photographs in this presentation bring to life the elements of the feasts’ preparations and celebrations. Women and their daughters make bread, crafted in myriad shapes and forms, as the principal element used to decorate the altars and banquet tables created for St. Joseph’s feast. Papier-mache is the art form used to create ornately sculpted facades for the 85-foot towers – the gigli – carried on the shoulders of men through the streets of Nola to celebrate the Festa dei Gigli. The Ceri is a race through the streets of Gubbio of three huge wooden cylinders, each crowned with a statue of a saint and also borne on the shoulders of a nine-man team. Men and their sons carry on the traditions of both the Gigli and the Ceri.
About Stephanie Trudeau:
Stephanie Trudeau is a singer/actress/writer who worked nine years as a music educator at several Catholic elementary schools in Brooklyn. After completing her B.S. in 2005 in the History and Performance of American Popular Song, she began a research project on the continuity of Italian culture and traditions in Italian-American communities. In 2006 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy to continue her Festa research, in which she compared and contrasted the traditions of the feasts as they are celebrated in both Italy and the U.S. After completing her Fulbright she began working at The Bronx Museum of the Arts as manager of the museum book/gift shop. After leaving the Bronx Museum Stephanie created a company, Stevie’s Artisans Urban Folk Art, which sells the work of four artisans. She has presented her Festa photos at DeVry College in New Jersey and at the Brooklyn Heights Montessori School where she currently works as an administrative assistant. Her article, Born to Giglio, published in 2005 in “Voices, The Journal of New York Folklore,” was the start of this Festa journey
Thursday, November 17, 2011 – 7pm
Italian American Museum
155 Mulberry Street
New York, NY 10013
Suggested Donation of $10
** Seating is Limited **
PLEASE RESERVE EARLY
To reserve a place for this event please call the
Italian American Museum at (212) 965-9000
or
email: ItalianAmericanMuseum@gmail.com
Italian American Museum on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Italian-American-Museum/90138502227
