Street art dedicated to Egonu vandalized

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 13 - The street art dedicated to Italian volleyball's historic Olympic gold medal winning team standout Paola Egonu was vandalized on Tuesday, just a day after it was put up outside the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) office in Rome.
    The mural by artist Laika was sullied with pink paint sprayed over the Italian champion's skin.
    Members of the government and opposition condemned the episode on Tuesday.
    Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani expressed "solidarity and the most total disdain for this grave gesture of vulgar racism", writing that Egonu is "our pride" on X.
    Elisabetta Lancellotta, a lawmaker for Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party and national councillor of Italian Olympic committee CONI said she had "a hard time believing that in 2024, in Italy, someone can be bothered by the mural of a champion who has just led our national (volleyball) team to win, for the first time, an Olympic gold for Italy". Rome Mayor Antonio Gualtieri slammed it as a "shame" and an "insult to a great Italian" while another member of his Democratic Party (PD) in the opposition, Annalisa Corrado, called the perpetrators "cowards who play outside the rules, their faces covered".
    "There is something, however, which they can't hide: deep ignorance, spite for an evolving world and for an inclusion that progresses in spite of them and their very dangerous desire to abuse others that only brings tragedies", Corrado noted. Five-Star Movement (M5S) lawmaker Agostino Santillo said it "will certainly not be the stupidity of an individual manifesting their discomfort to obfuscate the achievements of Italian champion Paola Egonu".
    The installation, called Italian-ness, was meant to not only celebrate the Italian gold won by the women's volleyball team at the Paris Olympics but also to promote the battle against racism.
    The street art's name Italian-ness is a reference to right-wing League MEP General Roberto Vannacci's assertion in a bestselling book that Egonu's "somatic features do not represent Italian-ness".
    Veneto-born Egonu, 25, who has Nigerian parents, top scored in Sunday's Olympic final victory over reigning champions the USA to give Italy its first Olympic volleyball gold medal for either sex.
    The art by Laika shows Egonu spiking a ball bearing the words: "Stop to racism, hate, xenophobia, ignorance".
    The Roman street artist, who says she has been "fighting injustice" with her works in the Italian capital since 2019, said about her latest paste-up piece that it was against Vannacci and others who share his views. (ANSA).