The installation of Viaggio was based on my research work on the eighteenth-century Croatian missionary in India, Philip Vezdin, and on the documentary "Viaggio", which was shot in 2003 by Daniel Riđički and I. Philip Vezdin spent 13 years in the south of India on the Malabar coast, on the border between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. He wrote the Viaggio nelle Indie Orientali travelogue and also composed the first Sanskrit grammar published in Europe. He wrote poetry in Malayalam and translated the Bible into Malayalam. He actively promoted the dialogue of cultures 200 years before it became popular.
The project Viaggio is a visual attempt to undergo that very same journey from understanding to feeling and caring. It communicates through an installation of map-like paintings, old suitcases, rolled paintings on paper, personal photos and a 50-minute documentary titled Viaggio. More than two centuries after Vezdin, I undergo a personal journey based on Vezdin’s itinerary, and in a documentary film compare the India of Vezdin’s time and sensibility with contemporary India.