The View from Etna: Queering Sicily, Teste di Moro , and the Southern Question

Since the mid-nineteenth century, Southern Italy has frequently been depicted as an exoticised and sexualised destination, often through the instrumentalisation of its own cultural tradition. The teste di moro, traditional head-shaped ceramic vases, are a prime example of this process and have recently been used in the TV show The White Lotus (2022) to narrate a story of unruly jealousy interwoven with Sicily. Simultaneously, local LGBTQIA+ artists are today reworking the teste di moro, troubling the rhetoric of Southern sexual backwardness. Adopting a transmedial perspective, the article analyses the ceramics created by artist and designer Cori Amenta, the drag outfits by performer La Diamond, and the graphic novel Basilicò (2016) by Giulio Macaione. It argues that the three artists provide a counter-narrative take on the teste di moro, questioning exoticising processes, creating the means to tell the story of ‘the other’, and even queering the Southern cultural tradition.