Note su Zeret (Notes on Zeret)
Description:
Notes on Zeret is derived from field notes of a research trip by Rossella Biscotti (Molfetta, 1978; lives and works between Brussels and Rotterdam) to Zeret Cave in the mountains of Ethiopia’s Manz province. The cave offered shelter to a large group (an estimated 2,000) of Ethiopian resistance fighters who had survived the massacre by colonial troops using mustard gas, a toxic gas already banned in 1925 by the League of Nations at the Geneva International Conference in April 1939. Most of the people who sought refuge in Zeret were gunned down by machine gun outside the cave fleeing the chemical attack. Photos providing ideas of the organization of daily life inside the cave during the Resistance alternate with traces of the massacre. Guided by Elfnesh Tegeni, a daughter of one of the 15 survivors, after first obtaining permission from the community to visit the site and take photographs, Rossella Biscotti draws on historical research carried out by Matteo Dominioni in 2006 when news of the massacre was first made public in Italy. Notes on Zeret provides testimony to gaps in the collective discourse and to the violence of colonial history as it offers a counter-narrative to the propagandistic intent of the collections in the former Colonial Museum of Rome. ML
