In my youth, in Raasepori, I worked as a caretaker on a neighbouring island during the summers, where an older woman and her daughter were my employers. I painted walls, chopped wood, and mowed lawns, and because their house required much maintenance, I worked for them during many summers. We became good friends, and a valuable outcome of our friendship was that their interest in art rubbed off on me. Flora, the mother, died at home in 2008, and Diana continues to live in the house by herself.
In the winter, the women lived in Italy and worked in art restoration. Upon arriving in Sicily in the early 70s, they fell in love with the island where art was a part of everyday life and stayed for many years. They visited the ruins of prehistoric and ancient temples in countryside forests and attended church services, where they admired the art and architecture. A few of the buildings were pagan sanctuaries in the beginning, and Greek temples were built on their sites. Some temples were transformed into churches, then mosques, and then churches again. All these periods were visible in the shape and ornamentation of the buildings. In the cities, ruins from earlier eras remained part of the urban landscape, and the women were intrigued by the presence of prehistoric and ancient peoples and the resonance of a seemingly living current of time. Many old public artworks were in poor condition when the women arrived on the island, and they began working with local art museums to restore a few of them.
Diana had long hoped to make a final trip to Sicily to see their former projects and visit places dear to her. The last time she travelled to the island was in the early 2000s. I suggested I accompany her on the trip, and she was excited by the idea. We set off for Sicily in April 2023. Life on the island had changed a lot over the last decades, and Diana was pleased that there was much less poverty, but the place she had fallen in love with had disappeared as economic development progressed. People no longer lived amidst art: There was little left of the ancient market in the centre of Palermo, where they had restored a mosaic. The artwork had been cut from its place and put in a museum. On a white wall in cold light, removed from the vibrant environment of the market, the mosaic felt lifeless. But it was just as well, as the market was disappearing due to a new shopping centre in the same area. The forest temples had been turned into tourist attractions, where the entrances went through the gift shops. Diana came to Sicily to say goodbye to a place she loved dearly, but it had gone before her.
The wood I’ve used to build the film viewers and stereoscopes comes from fallen trees in the garden where I worked in the mid-nineties. The photographs were taken during our trip and in Diana’s home.