Welcome Carpet: A Multicultural Patchwork Installation in Palermo

On May 12, 2017, Piazza Bellini in Palermo was transformed by Welcome Carpet, a temporary installation by Pabo Dilet (the nom de plume of journalist Dario La Rosa, born 1980 in Palermo). The work consisted of a patchwork of carpets collected from local residents and foreign citizens, laid out as a new, walkable floor. The diverse textiles, contrasting decorations, and mosaic-like harmony served as a metaphor for necessary coexistence, though often complicated. Among the carpets were one painted by children from the multicultural Ballarò district, a white carpet ready for a new story, a carpet from a young Senegalese woman who married a Sicilian and went to sea to save migrants, and a carpet from a Romanian woman who had children with a Bangladeshi man and lives with them in Palermo, uniting distant cultures, religions, and traditions. The installation aimed to stage the value of difference and extract beauty and structure from it. The location, in the heart of the historic Arab quarter Kalsa, is surrounded by Arab-Norman architecture, Baroque churches, the 18th-century Teatro Bellini, and the 15th-century Palazzo Pretorio (city hall).