Rosaria Iazzetta: an artist on the road

Today we would like to introduce Rosaria Iazzetta, an artist and professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples.
In 2005 she finished a Master’s degree in Sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts, thanks to a scholarship from the Japanese government and the Ministry of Italian Affairs. The theme of his art is always social.
In 2018 he embarks on a solo trip from Naples to Japan aboard his Yamaha MT07. An experience that will prove to be not only rich in encounters but also in emotions: her project involves women in a unique and special way.

I believe that a work of art should be concerned with social needs and best represent difficult aspects that are not yet addressed. Free creativity allows one to affirm the most intimate aspects of the world.

Where does your passion for motorcycles come from?

When I was 13 years old, I started with riding a Vespa 50, but at the same time I would change the position of my father’s parked car when he would leave me alone in the car and go downstairs to play the coupon at the Football Pool.

I think I always enjoyed riding, I found it a special way to experience distances and discover places.
Then the transition to motorcycles came as an adult, when the aesthetics of the motorcycle were considerably closer to a sculpture than to a scooter, and also presented favorable costs for purchase. First a 250 and then a 700 in displacement, always Yamaha.

Let’s talk about “Yellow horse evolution project.” How did this project come about? Why this name?

I specialized with my studies in Japan years ago and then I started to be invited to the north, exactly in Iwate Prefecture, to carry out research in the social and creative field. There two years ago I focused on this great social scourge of the high number of women who commit suicide in that area. Having done various research, it seems that a macho culture, which is still quite entrenched, and a difficulty on their part to assert rights while living in
different social circles.
Some villages in that area in the past were inhabited by horses, short-legged, light-haired, but extremely fast. Characteristics that seemed metaphorically to be present in my bike. At that point I thought it might be useful not only to them, but also to many others, to bring examples of women from different countries who while experiencing difficulty in asserting their dreams, did not give up. An idea then that attempted to evolve the concept of individual affirmations and connect all these women by directly using my bike and physical energy to reach them. So, since this was a project that does not claim revolution but intends to emphasize a necessary evolution and includes a yellow-colored vehicle, like the horses that inhabited those territories, I decided to call it the Yellow Horse Evolution Project.

Professor, artist and biker. How did you manage to mix these three passions?

I couldn’t tell you how I mixed everything together. I could explain why I couldn’t do it any other way, maybe it comes easier to me. I find that the state that unites all these different categories is freedom!
In a state of lack of freedom I think it is impossible to create art and impossible to feel the pleasure of the wind in your chest when you are on a motorcycle. By including to freedom, responsibility I believe one can also become a Professor! Of course, it would be convenient to choose one of the three at times to fully and more deeply experience the feeling, but I think these experiences mixed at the same time allow you to create the right balance between the inspirational and realization phases!

In your website bio I really liked the sentence, “I believe that Art work should focus on social needs, and represent all those difficult issues that have not yet been addressed. Creativity grants the freedom needed to break ideologies and the most intimate aspects of the world.” (“I believe that Art work should focus on social needs, and represent all those difficult issues that have not yet been addressed. Creativity provides the freedom needed to break ideologies and the most intimate aspects of the world.”). Have you encountered this in your own journey as well?

Sure. Let’s say that the leitmotif of my creative work is really to try to break ideologies and penetrate where there is normally no access in society! Yellow Horse I can consider it a performative way of interacting with people, to show how in different countries and cultures, women today still face the same issues and discrimination. Perhaps a sculptural work could not have told the immensity and diversity that a motorcycle allowed me to experience instead.
I felt, that if I really wanted to work on such a challenging and important issue, I had to reach out directly to people in their places of origin and work on how to document the 59 interviews in their home territories, and then make them usable in order to inspire them.

I was very impressed with the way you travel, interacting with women from different countries and making them part of your story. What were the commonalities between you and the other women?

Many of the women I interviewed I did not know and was terrified at times that we might not have commonalities. As I continued to travel and meet them, I realized that our most important commonality was the fact that we were women!
That in itself, in addition to our prearranged meeting, was the point of trust that I had placed in them, in their story, and they in my project, even though they had never seen me before!
We did not have the same language, not the same job, not even the same life experience, yet when we talked we both felt everything, in the tears of certain topics, in the emotion remembering the past, and in the excitement of an embrace that may never be repeated.

You went through 13 different countries, what difficulties did you encounter? How did people react to seeing a lone female biker?

The difficulties were obviously many: from the bureaucracy at the borders moving away from Europe to finding a hotel that had a garage for the bike, from the nonexistent road in Mongolia to the cold in Russia and Kazakhstan, from the impossibility of using the fast roads in China and Korea, which are forbidden to motorcycles to the fuel to be carried in jerry cans when the distances were too great and my tank too small to exceed 250 km range.
Reactions have often differed from country to country. The most impressive ones in China where many people did not believe I was really a woman! They could not understand how a woman could travel these distances on a motorcycle alone! A clear distinction there was between the rehearsed reactions of men and women. The men, a kind of vindication: if she has
succeeded in this, imagine what I can do, they thought. The women, a kind of joy: she succeeded in a dream, maybe I can follow mine too! In women, an emotion dictated by inspiration.
So many unknown people cried and offered gifts, food, money and supported me by guiding me to specific places or just giving me directions.

You have organized a trip full of appointments. I imagine the motorcycle was not only a means of transportation in this whole project but one of the fulcrums of it.

The motorcycle was the star of the trip. In the interviews the motorcycle is always there because I wanted it to be evident that you and I physically reached out to those people. When the customs clearance processes took time in South Korea, I preferred to print a full-size photo of the motorcycle so that it could be heard there during the interviews even though it was physically in a container in the Incheon port. Many people admired its components, the way it stowed its luggage, or its technical features. The bike is called Juno, and for me it was essential to leave with her.
Her versatility, weather and road safety, the certainty of being able to be independent with your own vehicle, I think were fundamental to the realization of the project.
The feeling of being at home with her even when there was no horizon line, no home or person, for miles and miles, it was great and important to be together, just to not lose the sense of travel and orientation.

Was this your first such challenging solo motorcycle trip?

Yellow Horse is the third motorcycle trip but I think the first trip that was more structured and really important. The first trip I took embarking to Sardinia, then Corsica to France. The second one to Greece and the Greek islands. And here is the third one from Naples to Japan. The first trip lasted one month. The second two months and this last one four months.

Outstanding sponsors supported your beautiful project: from Yamaha to Givi but especially Iwate Prefecture in Japan, which I read is struggling with a very high rate of female suicide. What was the message you wanted to convey?

In fact, I thank Yamaha and Givi for supporting the project. Their support, like that of the Soh Gallery in Tokyo and the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Tokyo, was crucial. Knowledge of such a serious problem in Iwate Prefecture, such as the high number of suicides of women, we could say was the motive for structuring such an articulated project. Then meeting all those women and interviewing them became very important because it gave me a “pretext” to never stop, to keep going, knowing that people were waiting for me in specific places.
My goal has always been the same: to demonstrate as much as possible the strength of women, the ability to believe
in their dreams without surrendering to social abuses, cultural dynamics and political issues in each individual area.

What were the most beautiful emotions of this trip?

Seeing people cry from realizing where you started, where you are coming from and why you are doing this still causes me emotion at the mere memory. To have fallen numerous times, in the mud, in the rain and disassembling all the luggage, getting the bike back up and putting it back together again without ever getting hurt I would call them exciting miracles, unforgettable. To be hosted by unknown family in Kazakhstan or welcomed by Russian students in the Altai Mountains area, simply because I was the first Italian professor on a motorcycle they met has no equal. The crucifix given to me by a Kazakh woman as she told me to be careful and corrected my pronunciation of her country. To have tasted fish for the first time, in China, after eating only meat for months. To have cried when I arrived in Tokyo, which I was observing for the first time as a motorcyclist, outside a subway and away from cabs. Unforgettable!

You have interviewed women who are struggling or affirming their own dream or right. Which ones have been the ones that have left their mark on you?

All the women interviewed have an extraordinary personal struggle , which they carry on, in my opinion.
Stanislaca Stasa Zajovic, Women in Black referent in Belgrade, and Patricia Tough Women in Black referent in Bologna, interviewed in Serbia and Bologna respectively, are extraordinary women, anti-militarists and feminists of great depth. Rosaria Capacchione, an anti-camorra journalist who lives under escort, interviewed in Castelvolturno who, together with Tina Palomba, and Angela Nicoletti, carry on a fierce fight against criminal dynamics, taking sides on the front lines with the print media. Olinka Vistiva, producer and creator of the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia; Ren Bo, Chinese artist interviewed in Beijing; Ko Milkyoung, President of the Korean Women Hot Line, interviewed in Seoul, South Korea. Also, Yoshida Shimada, artist and feminist from Tokyo; and Zhazira Diseembekova, TV producer and interesting journalist interviewed in Astana in Kazakhstan.
These are women of great determination who incredibly empowered my entire journey as well.

What is your advice to female riders who would like to go but are often afraid to travel alone and pursue their dreams?

I would say the same thing I tell my students once they enroll in the Sculpture course at the Academy of Fine Arts:
“Now it is necessary for you to take responsibility for working on your dreams. It is not enough to have had the courage to enroll in a course you love, now you need to believe in it, devote time and enthusiastically fight the fears that will come your way.”
When you own a motorcycle, you think the air in your chest may be enough for a day or a few hours. If a dream comes to you, if you think your idea of travel includes motorcycles or is your passion, you have to work to make it happen and leave nothing to chance. Don’t ask for advice from people whose farthest place they have visited is only a few miles from their home.
You have to make an effort to devote time to what you love, plan, be flexible to changes and be at peace when you will be alone for a long time. Understand that fear is a frozen state that does not allow you to truly experience what you feel. Understand that self-sabotage is the order of the day and that you must fight it if you want to succeed in what you love. Every time you wait and stop, you take away space from the meaning of the life you are seeking or practicing. Onward and upward! Nowhere is it written that it will go wrong; in fact, that it will go great is possible! Positive attitude and great determination, and everything, but really everything, becomes achievable!

Photo Credits: Rosaria Iazzetta
Follow Rosaria HERE