Agnese Purgatorio (b. 1964), born in Bari, has long described herself as “caught between East and West”, a position that lies at the heart of her artistic research. The themes of migration, nomadism, and minority rights are central to her practice, which originates in photography and expands into collage, video, installation, and performance. Her work reflects a continuous inquiry into memory and collective experience, approached with both poetic and political sensibilities. In Perhaps You Can Write to Me, she adopts a theatrical and performative photographic style to represent life as existential nomadism, emphasizing a sense of timelessness and suspension through the use of black and white. In the video work of the same title, the artist is tied, like Ulysses, to the mast of a rowboat, blindfolded and carried by companions along the Sicilian coast near the Strait of Scylla and Charybdis. Her figure evokes martyrdom. The boat attempts to land several times, only to be repelled by the hostile reactions of the locals: “Leave this Country,” they shout. The video becomes a powerful metaphor for the condition of the migrant, for the frustrated longing for integration and belonging, where neither the undocumented person nor the artist finds refuge. Like Ulysses, they are forced to continue an endless journey, without a safe harbor. Similarly, in Nella Clandestinità (In Clandestinity), Purgatorio places migrants on a raft shaped like Italy, positioning them at the margins to underscore their solitude and exclusion. Leading them is a pregnant female figure, a symbol of future and change. The work offers a deeply symbolic and evocative image of humanity in motion, heightened by the expressive use of black and white.