Gabriele

In December 2023, my nephew Gabriele was born.

It was an indescribable emotion to hold him in my arms and meet a newborn in my family, after such a long time in my life where I’ve only been surrounded by adults.

I felt as if a wave of knowledge had washed me over, and suddenly there were so many nuggets of experience I could pass over to him.

I looked around in awe, seeing how many people surrounded him ever since his birth and that he will be able to rely on in the future.

I know my sister will teach him ambition and justice. He’ll be good-hearted and open like his dad. Hopefully, he’ll take generosity after my mother and curiosity after my father. My brother will be for him an example of kindness and humanity.

So, what do I want to introduce him to?

I imagined that I’d be clueless as to what goodness could I ever show my nephew as he grows up.

When I started working on this drawing, I was in the middle of a remarkably stressful time. I had just been laid off from the company I had been working at for two and a half years, after having been in an almost depressive state for the few months that preceded that layoff, and while facing some more difficulties in my private life. This was the third time in seven years that I was facing financial insecurity (I was –thankfully– fired from a job I disliked in 2018, and after that, my working hours at a new position were reduced in 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

There were days where some negative beliefs I used to have about myself resurfaced, raw and resistant to any attempt of therapy-talking myself out of them. I was again a lonely, fast-aging, immigrant woman speaking broken German and failing at careers that everyone else was breezing through so easily. I would lie if I passed under silence that, on some days, my tank was rather empty.

But other beliefs inside my head fought harder to be brought into the full light.
I believed that I had come out of my previous drawbacks with increased awareness, skills and tenacity. That I had relationships to tend to, and a new little person to meet. That most problems have a solution, and when you can’t find it on your own, people do help –whether it’s through a cheer-up text, offering material resources or sharing their tips on obscure online forums. That the broken German I am so ashamed of speaking is enough to help a fellow immigrant navigate the intricacies of the law. That art, music and great novels are always there to get you through a bleak day. That life goes on, and that if you have to stomp your feet and cry, you might as well join the people marching in the streets, chanting in unity for wars to end.

One evening in March, I was at home alone watching The Old Oak by Ken Loach, following a friend’s advice. Listening to my lamentations, he had guessed correctly that I would resonate with a movie proposing unlikely social alliances as a means to resist, as humans, against Capitalism that wants us divided and disposable.

The tapestry shown in the movie, a symbol of alliance between the autochthonous English miners and the Syrians refugees, touched me deeply.

I started digging into the history of workers’ unions’ tapestry and was blown away by the force of these images, oftentimes abstracted icons that would help thousands of people involved in the same struggles stand together.

I ruminated on the fact that this was the same power uniting people under the same (religious) faith. Before becoming decoys for political oppression, religious faiths have been for millennia the glue holding entire populations together.

And how more thundering was then the sound of my nephew’s name, Gabriele, a messenger figure that appears in all three Abrahamic religions (Gabriel in Christianity, Gaḇrīʾēl גַבְרִיאֵל in Judaism and Jibrīl or Jibraeil جبريل in Islam)?

I tried to convey this concept both in the banner at the top of the drawing and through the tiles on the right, inspired to the tile patterns typically find in mosques, but comprising also the modular shapes of a cross and of a star.

The more I welcomed the hidden messages in my nephew’s name, the more I started embellishing the importance of our connection. Rejoicing at his birth was handing me a second gift –discovering that unity, interconnectedness, equality, solidarity are the teachings I hope to pass on to him as he grows up.

I would love for him to perceive the continuity and changes of human history, and to be drawn to the heritage left from our ancestors, so to understand that ideas travel through time. That’s why I decided to represent the angel with colorful wings, an ancient tradition that Italian painters such as Pietro Cavallini carried on during the Middle Ages. In 1293, Pietro Cavallini painted a Doomsday fresco in Basilica di Santa Cecilia (quite importantly, Saint patron of music!) in Trastevere, which is the artwork I drew inspiration from for the wings.

I sprinkled more on-the-nose symbols of entire movements and communities that I hope will become familiar and safe for him: the LGBTQIA+ flag, a transfeminist symbol, an intersectionality symbol, a workers’ right symbol in black and yellow, in memory of both times of solidarity among people and the imperative to keep unlearning dogmas enabled by one’s privilege.

As I write this text, I notice myself going back and forth, editing and re-editing paragraphs that give away my condition of privilege too transparently, or that make me come across as tone-deaf.
The reality is that I most certainly am: I, a white European woman, am writing about a drawing I made in my free time, connected to super-fast internet, that I can pay for thanks to my new, well-paid, 40-hours-week office job, in one of the wealthiest countries of planet Earth which is currently at peace. My existence alone is an act of violence.

So probably, while I am on my own path towards liberation, one gift that I could make to my nephew is to bring him with me. I can show him that living is not something we can do carelessly. Life is going to be hard, and for some, impossibly hard. We cannot do it alone. We cannot forget the sacrifices that those before us made. We cannot leave each other behind.

And there is meaning, fulfilment and joy, in picking our battles –not to be adversarial with each other, but to uplift each other; to strive to be understood, dignified and included.

To have friends all over the world. To have an aunt living in another country, and yet keeping a close eye and a close heart on your growth.