Street art dedicated to Egonu vandalized – General News

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,...