Europa, a touching work by Cristina Donati Meyer repurposed on the occasion of the Salvini-Orbán meeting

Following yesterday’s meeting in Milan’s prefecture building between Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, artist Cristina Donati Meyer (Milan, 1985) posted her 2016 work Europa in Piazza San Babila, where an important and well-participated demonstration was held to affirm Italy’s membership in Europe. It is a painting depicting the drama of migrants on the Balkan route, created at a time when the issue, exacerbated by the raging civil war in Syria, had reached the most acute stages of emergency.

“It is,” the artist explains, “a tribute to those who lost their lives on the Balkan route of despair, studded with nets, walls and barbed wire, and to the Milanese square that reacted to the provocative presence of the two right-wing extremists in Resistance Gold Medal Milan.” The work depicts a family divided by a metal barrier in Orbán’s Hungary, which has erected walls and barbed wire against migrants: the barrier divides the father with his newborn child from the mother, who is on the opposite side of the barrier. However, the mother finds a way to breastfeed the baby even beyond the net. In the work, there is deliberately no distinction between which side is “right” and which is “wrong”: the two portions divided by the net amalgamate with a strong sense of drama, rebirth and union, and as a redemption against humiliation.

Cristina Donati Meyer has already distinguished herself in recent weeks for artistic actions that are strongly critical of Matteo Salvini: on one occasion she had created a painting against the refoulement of migrants, and on yet another a work against the velleity of censusing the Roma population.

Europa, a touching work by Cristina Donati Meyer repurposed on the occasion of the Salvini-Orbán meeting

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