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XX: Women, Made in the South of Italy Many women in San Luca are mothers, wives and even accomplices of mobsters, but some are standing up to the powerful Ndrangheta and calling for peace.* Onishi Gallery will present the first exhibit of XX: Women, Made in the South of Italy/XX: Donne, Create nel sud Italia, contemporary Italian art based on the San Luca Womens Movement of Southern Italy, January 8 - 21, 2009. A little over a year ago when Rosy Canale, a businesswoman and volunteer social worker in Calabria (the toe-of-the-boot region and poorest area of Italy), organized the San Luca Womens Movement into a sewing collective to preserve the areas tradition of hand-loomed and hand-crafted flax, silk and straw textiles, to give the towns women a small income and to improve the image of a place known as the home of Italys most powerful and dangerous mafia, the Ndrangheta (pronounced en-DRAHN-geh-tah), her car was burned and she was threatened. Today, with 300 members selling their handmade placemats, table runners and linen towels outside their community, the women are using their influence to break the century old cycle of Mafia crime that has increased drastically in the past few years when the Ndrangheta took over lucrative cocaine routes from Latin America to Europe, a multibillion-dollar enterprise. *For more information on the women of San Luca, please read Tracy Wilkinsons article in the Los Angeles Times. October 3, 2008: articles.latimes.com Now Rosy Canale and <b>...</b> |
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