Valentina Medda's 'The Last Lamentation' transforms funeral dirges into participatory video performance

Valentina Medda's 'The Last Lamentation' is a participatory video performance that investigates the tradition of funeral lamentation in relation to Mediterranean migration deaths. Curated by Maria Paola Zedda and supported by Italian Council (11th edition, 2022), the work features twelve black-clad women performing a ritual dirge by the sea, blending sound and silence to address the tragedy of death at sea. Medda frames the piece as a poetic-political act restoring dignity to lives deemed disposable, referencing Judith Butler's concept of ungrievable lives, and explores a postfeminist perspective on the body as liquid or aquatic. The video premiered from February 1-3, 2024, at the Cimitero Monumentale della Certosa di Bologna (Sala delle Catacombe), with documentation hosted at DAS – Dispositivo Arti Sperimentali. The work will be exhibited at MAN in Nuoro from March 28 to June 16, 2024, before entering the MAMbo collections in Bologna. Zedda describes the video as an abstract narrative where body, pathos, and landscape layer through absence and presence, with slowness creating dramatic tension and suspension.