Mezomaro, whose title comes from the word meaning “Mediterranean” in Esperanto, plays with source materials, combining chalk drawings, photographs, newspaper clippings and archival images to explore ideas of mobility and citizenship, poetically expanding current global situations to the history of people and geography over time.
Drawing on Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso (1516) – a work which contains both a proto-science-fiction and a battle scene on Lampedusa, where Racco’s photographs were taken – Mezomaro gives insight into our contemporary context by shedding light on how a minuscule island is connected to complex global issues via the multitude of people from different areas of the world attempting to reach its shores.