SALIS is a series of cotton tapestries, hand-woven on a manual loom and hand-embroidered. These tapestries offer an interpretation of the Salento region, utilizing water as both a measure and a metaphor for the complexities of daily life, which are often overlooked by mass tourism narratives that portray the area solely as a holiday destination.
Water is presented as a precious and scarce resource essential for agriculture and human sustenance. The Salento region is traversed by one of Italy's main watersheds, resulting in short and often seasonal watercourses, and a particularly fragile artificial river system.
In this context, Salento embodies the recurring theme of a tourist destination where, perhaps more than elsewhere, lives run parallel on distant and, to some extent, irreconcilable planes. Water, therefore, becomes the lens through which to explore the contrast between the projected image and the daily reality of a land marked by scarcity, a land where clear beaches coexist with arid fields.

Archival research yielded antique maps of the territory, postcards, and archival photographs of beaches and numerous watchtowers. From these materials, specific signs of canals, vineyards, and some streams were extracted. These are not faithful representations of a measurable or lost reality, but rather suggestions of a broader and more complex history. These signs, dispersed in a neutral and homogeneous space, intersect with images of these abandoned, undefined, and evanescent towers – much like these ancient architectures themselves – depicted in subtle colors within the warp and weft of the tapestry. The result is a superimposition and a contrast: between lines, techniques, and interpretations of a territory.

Product specifications:

SALIS is a project by Scatter d, realized by Anna Lucia Rizzello, a talented Salento weaver, for the exhibition Intrecci/Intertwinings 2025.

Size approx. 90 Cm x150 Cm

Photos: Alba-De-Angelis

*Custom features on request