Massimo Pastore's Santi Migranti: Street Art Recasts Saints as Migrants

Neapolitan artist Massimo Pastore (b. 1971) launched Santi Migranti, a public art photography project that pastes large-scale santini (devotional cards) on walls across Italian and foreign cities—Naples, Matera, Venice, Rome, and Brussels. The project responds to Italy's anti-migrant laws by reimagining religious and cultural icons as migrants. Figures include Santa Patrizia of Constantinople, San Gaudioso (the African Saint), Santa Brigida of Sweden, and contemporary icons like the Dalai Lama and Rudolf Nureyev. Each is depicted wrapped in a gold thermal blanket, a symbol of migrant rescue. Pastore uses models who resemble the saints, constructing their vestments and photographing them; for the Dalai Lama and Nureyev he used existing images. The posters are sometimes pasted without authorization. Pastore describes the work as political in the sense of addressing the polis, delivering a "gentle message" that migration has always been part of human history. The project was inspired by #quiriposa posters that appeared in Naples in February 2019, which reproduced inscriptions from graves at Lampedusa's cemetery and stories of shipwrecks. Pastore interviewed for the article explains that he wanted to counter the loss of memory about migration's role in cultural and religious traditions.