African Civil Wars Paintings (2018-2022)
About:
One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father leaving our Rome apartment during the night in the early 1980s in his Italian army uniform. I was 8 years old and remember watching him drive off in his little yellow working class Fiat 500 into the night. My father, a soldier, was joining a UN peace-keeping mission in Lebanon during the country's bloody and messy civil war. I was somewhat proud, confused and mostly very, very scared. At age 8 I knew nothing about Lebanon and its civil war seemed too complicated for any adult to explain to me. I kept asking questions, watch the news and look at Middle-East maps trying to understand where my father went and why. My father would be away for 1 year. During that year I obsessed about the word "civil war": it made no sense, just like the war in Lebanon. Later in 1992, in the middle of my teenage struggles, my father would leave us, again, this time for two years to join NATO troops in Sarajevo. Another messy civil war abroad tearing my family apart. I credit these experiences for making me very interested at a very early age in politics, civil wars and social strife. They changed the course of my life in unexpected ways.
In 2000/2001, at the age of 24, somewhat following my father's footsteps, I left my job in Alitalia to join a raggedy group of idealistic international volunteers departing for war-torn Angola where a civil-war had devastated the country for 33 years. My jobs in Angola included making sure that the three preschools in rural villages received daily shipments of corn meal to feed the children their only daily meal - missing shipments almost always meant that a child might not survive; oversee the building of 50 latrines and wells and other community projects. Our deployment was disrupted when UNITA rebels attacked one of the trade schools we managed and kidnapped the children. Since we only lived a mile away from that school we were woken up by the sound of gunfire, explosions and screams and had to evacuate our site.
Later in 2002 I spent 3 months in Sierra Leone at the tail-end of the country's diamond-fueled civil-war to research the process reuniting former child soldiers with their families and reintegrate them into their villages. There I spent my time interviewing children, rebels, war criminals and victims of torture and traveled to the then off-limits Kono region (the diamond region) to see the diamond field operations.
The "African Civil War" Series is loosely based on personal memories, research, emotions and photos from my time in Angola and Sierra Leone.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father leaving our Rome apartment during the night in the early 1980s in his Italian army uniform. I was 8 years old and remember watching him drive off in his little yellow working class Fiat 500 into the night. My father, a soldier, was joining a UN peace-keeping mission in Lebanon during the country's bloody and messy civil war. I was somewhat proud, confused and mostly very, very scared. At age 8 I knew nothing about Lebanon and its civil war seemed too complicated for any adult to explain to me. I kept asking questions, watch the news and look at Middle-East maps trying to understand where my father went and why. My father would be away for 1 year. During that year I obsessed about the word "civil war": it made no sense, just like the war in Lebanon. Later in 1992, in the middle of my teenage struggles, my father would leave us, again, this time for two years to join NATO troops in Sarajevo. Another messy civil war abroad tearing my family apart. I credit these experiences for making me very interested at a very early age in politics, civil wars and social strife. They changed the course of my life in unexpected ways.
In 2000/2001, at the age of 24, somewhat following my father's footsteps, I left my job in Alitalia to join a raggedy group of idealistic international volunteers departing for war-torn Angola where a civil-war had devastated the country for 33 years. My jobs in Angola included making sure that the three preschools in rural villages received daily shipments of corn meal to feed the children their only daily meal - missing shipments almost always meant that a child might not survive; oversee the building of 50 latrines and wells and other community projects. Our deployment was disrupted when UNITA rebels attacked one of the trade schools we managed and kidnapped the children. Since we only lived a mile away from that school we were woken up by the sound of gunfire, explosions and screams and had to evacuate our site.
Later in 2002 I spent 3 months in Sierra Leone at the tail-end of the country's diamond-fueled civil-war to research the process reuniting former child soldiers with their families and reintegrate them into their villages. There I spent my time interviewing children, rebels, war criminals and victims of torture and traveled to the then off-limits Kono region (the diamond region) to see the diamond field operations.
The "African Civil War" Series is loosely based on personal memories, research, emotions and photos from my time in Angola and Sierra Leone.
"Limauro.. knows the background of the story he tells. With "Mare Nostrvm" he places it in a context as wide as the sea"
Washington Post
Mark jenkins
October 21, 2018
"Both menacing and beautiful.. strong.. Limauro's work is well researched and necessarily emphatic"
Washington CityPaper
Erin Devine
October 19, 2018
Washington Post
Mark jenkins
October 21, 2018
"Both menacing and beautiful.. strong.. Limauro's work is well researched and necessarily emphatic"
Washington CityPaper
Erin Devine
October 19, 2018