In 2023, my path crossed with that of the social cooperative On The Road, with whom I had the opportunity to develop several collage workshops. The workshops took place at Collettivo La Caciara and in Lido Tre Archi, two different contexts where collage became a way of working together and opening up conversations.

At Collettivo La Caciara, we focused on gender stereotypes. For the workshop, we used old magazines and advertisements from the 1950s and 1960s, looking at the way women and men were represented and how these images contributed to constructing certain roles.

Cutting, selecting and combining these images became a way of looking more closely at what surrounds us. We talked about how advertising and visual culture can influence the way we perceive ourselves, others, and the roles we are expected to occupy.

Each participant created their own collage, choosing and rearranging images, words and fragments from those magazines. The process was not about finding a single answer, but about observing, questioning and creating a different relationship with images that, at the time, presented certain ideas as natural or unquestionable.

In Lido Tre Archi, the theme shifted towards gender-based violence. Here, collage became a way of approaching a difficult subject from another perspective. Through images and words, conversations emerged around violence, resistance, solidarity and the need not to remain silent.

What interests me most about these workshops is precisely what happens during the process. An image can become a question, a fragment can open a conversation, and putting different images together can reveal something we had not noticed before.

For me, collage is not simply a technique. It is also a way of looking, questioning and relating to the images that surround us.

Because sometimes, changing the way we look at an image is already a way of changing what we see.