The Negus project grew out of a historical event dating from the Italian Fascist period: in the colonial era, after the conquest of Abyssinia, an effigy of the last Negus of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, was burned in the main square of our hometown Vernasca, a village located between Milano and Bologna; this episode coincided with the victorious return to the village of a soldier from the colonial war. In parallel, Hailé Selassié I became the Black Messiah for the Rastafarianism, a cult which was born in Jamaica dur- ing the 30s and then spread all over the planet, including Ethiopia, consid- ered the Mother Land by the Rasta followers. This way, an event that happened a few kilometres from where we were born and raised, enters in resonance with a cult and a culture developed in the opposite side of the planet: this is something that cannot pass unnoticed. We need to give new meanings to this fire, trying to construct a fil rouge which starts in Vernasca and arrives in Shashemene, Ethiopia.