In April 2014 the second chapter of The Remains of the Father begin, a research and artistic project by the South African artist Bridget Baker promoted by the residency program of Bologna Nosadella.due – Independent Residency for Public Art as a process of reflection on a subject that has still not received enough investigation by Italian historiography such as the colonial history and the subsequent implications in the contemporary era.

The second chapter of the project consists of a preparatory and exploratory residency period between Rome and Palermo, which will unfold in collaboration with two other Italian institutions working for the promotion and production of artistic research on issues related to a re-reading of contemporary history: Nomas Foundation and Isole.

The exterior gaze of Bridget Baker will arise therefore in connection with the gaze that, over time, Italians have turned to Africa, creating a link between the colonial period and the present. The contact and comparison with otherness, as opposed to the certainty of a story handed down and written, will be the theme of the whole experience. The idea of border and natural coastline that marks the threshold of a transition to another dimension, as real as that of the island, crossed by history, people, goods and cultures, will be counterbalanced by the idea of the utopian island or the disappeared island.

Bridget Baker (East London-South Africa, 1971) is a South African artist who has for years studied historic and historiographical material using sources as the vehicle for value and potential imagination with particular attention to women’s views, female experience in history and in those untold stories in which the woman is often the narrator. She lives in London and has participated in major collective exhibitions at the Museum of African Art (NYC), the South African National Gallery (Cape Town), the Centro des Artes Contemporanea (Burgos), the Palazzo delle Papesse (Siena), the Neue Berliner Kunstverein (Germany), The Wapping Project (London), and has also taken part in the second edition of the Johannesburg Biennale (Cape Town) and Oberhausen Film Festival (Germany).