My Sicilian Story: Pane e Zucchero (Bread and Sugar)

Abstract

Most Australians have their ancestry in another country and thus deal directly or indirectly with the issue of dual cultural identity. Geoffrey Stokes argues in ‘The Politics of Identity in Australia’ that, ‘discourses of identity are generally dynamic and reworked and reconstructed according to the political needs of the time’ (1997,8). Thus, this paper will add a personel history from an Italian perspective to the recent dialogues about cultural belonging and dislocation that has moulded and created the richly multicultural society that is contemporary Australia. It will reinforce the significance of other cultural values for the Australian way of life and highlight the nuances associated with displacement, racism, reconnection and assimilation. These concepts have been investigated in my art practice and will form the basis of the paper.