Bushes’ Rustle
Favara (AG), Italy, 2016
With: Francesco Gatti
Client: IF livreri
Organization: Farm Cultural Park – Francesco Lipari
Favara’s name derives from the Arabic Fabarìa, meaning “a place with plenty of water.” Over the centuries, the city’s landscape and natural resources have become deeply intertwined. One of its most strategic sites was once the Arab Garden, the city’s green lung. Today, however, that space has been consumed by unplanned urban growth, concealed behind unfinished buildings. The garden is now overtaken by dense thickets of cane.
The installation uses these indigenous canes as a metaphor: a symbol of resilience, community, unplanned and amorphous spaces, forgotten practices, and lingering presences. For generations, canes have been one of Favara’s most accessible materials—employed in construction (such as the counter-ceilings of local dammusi), as the raw material for panari baskets, and in countless domestic tools.
Bushes’ Rustle invites visitors to immerse themselves in a temporary installation that recalls the city’s history through the same rough material that has long sustained daily life in Favara.