I Talìa is a collective project by Cesura aimed at documenting Italy in stages. First proposed in 2009, each 14-day artistic residency focuses on the photographic documentation of a specific territory and is carried out by different members of the collective.
In 2025, I participated in the residencies organized in Piacenza and Monfalcone.
For centuries, Piacenza was an agricultural land stretched between the Po River and the Apennines, its economy rooted in farmsteads, cultivated fields, and small-scale food industries. In recent decades, however, its strategic location at the crossroads of major highways has reshaped the territory, turning it into one of Northern Italy’s leading logistics hubs. Where fields once stood, vast multinational distribution centers now rise, making the city a key node in European trade. Truck yards, workshops, and roadside diners have come to define this new landscape at the foot of the Apennines.
Monfalcone, a border town overlooking the Adriatic, has long hosted one of Italy’s largest Fincantieri shipyards. Over the decades, the jobs provided by the company first drew thousands of workers from southern Italy and later from Bangladesh through bilateral agreements. As a result, Monfalcone has become the Italian city with the highest percentage of foreign residents, who today make up about one-third of its population.
This industrial and migratory reality intertwines with a deeply polarized political climate, where the right-wing local administration has built its policies on confrontation with the Bangladeshi community, restricting cultural and religious practices and banning prayer in Islamic centers.