A mural celebrating the Italian Olympic volleyball champion Paola Egonu has become the target of “vulgar racism” after the athlete’s skin in the image was spray-painted pink.
The mural by the street artist Laika was defaced within a day of being unveiled on a wall close to the headquarters of the Italian Olympic committee (Coni) in Rome.
The image featured Egonu, who spearheaded Italian women’s volleyball’s first-ever gold medal win at the Paris Olympics, as she jumps to hit a ball with the words “stop racism”. The words were also erased by the vandals, who are yet to be identified.
Egonu, 25, was born in Italy to Nigerian parents.
Called Italianità, the mural was also Laika’s response to a passage in a bestselling book by a controversial army general and MEP, Roberto Vannacci, in which he wrote that even though Egonu was “Italian by citizenship … her physical features” did not “represent Italianness”.
Vannacci, who was elected to the European parliament in May with the backing of Italy’s far-right Lega, reiterated his view on Sunday after Egonu emerged as the top scorer in the women’s volleyball final against the USA.
The defacing of the mural was widely condemned by politicians from across the spectrum.
Antonio Tajani, Italy’s deputy prime minister, said: “I want to express solidarity with Paola Egonu and the most total disdain for this serious gesture of vulgar racism.”
Elly Schlein, the leader of the opposition Democratic party, said: “Racism is disgusting and must be countered.” She vowed to continue her party’s fight for a change in law that would grant citizenship at birth to children born in Italy to foreign parents, regardless of their parents’ citizenship, thus bringing the country into line with other European states. At present, children born in Italy to foreign parents can only apply from the age of 18.
Roberto Gualtieri, the mayor of Rome, said the vandalism was “a vile insult to a great Italian, who has brought the colours of our country to the top of the world, and to an artist committed to fighting against xenophobia”.
Simone Giannelli, a member of the Italian men’s volleyball team, said the vandals were “heartless, without dignity and without humanity”.
In 2022, Egonu took a break from the national team after receiving racial abuse online following Italy’s defeat to Brazil in the world championship semi-finals. “Reading those things and hearing them made me doubt myself more. And the worst one was, ‘Is she Italian?’ I was devastated,” she later said in an interview with Al Jazeera.