Alessandra Calò: CTONIO, a reflection on the depths of nature
Interviews
More about the artist:
Website: alessandracalo.it
Book: CTONIO
In recent years, Alessandra Calò has made a series of works that trace new emotional and physical geographies that materialize through the artist’s eyes to those who engage with her work.
Her images in her latest work “CTONIO,” published by Studiofaganel in 2024, also work in the same direction: they shift perceptual boundaries of a place, the island of Favara, through a gaze that is poetic but investigative at the same time.
I spoke with Alessandra about this to understand how she worked to create this unique imagery, far from time but so anchored in a time of History.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Alessia Rollo:
Ctonio is a book that fits into your artistic reflection on nature, a theme you had already addressed in your other series such as Herbarium. Here, however, we have a specific place, an island in the Mediterranean, an area you are linked to by your birthplace. Tell us about this choice and how the series came about, where you made it and where its name comes from
Alessandra Calò:
Residency, for me, means entering territorial social processes: observing and questioning the landscape, understanding the relationships that exist between environment and human settlement, finding the temporal thread that connects contemporaneity to its memory. Sometimes it is a tool for personal creation and growth; sometimes it becomes collective action.
I had read up on the morphological characteristics of the island and got excited about the idea that it was the island of hypogean gardens. I, who have been carrying out the Secret Garden project since 2014 could hardly remain indifferent to the discovery.
I had planned to print inside the hypogeum looking for sunlight: I had brought with me chemistry to prepare photosensitive emulsion, paper, fixing. But as often happens, a trivial cause such as adverse weather had made me change course, even with some reluctance.
All the materials I had brought with me I then brought back home and earmarked for later projects. The only useful thing I possessed, therefore, was the camera.
Changing the course of events, I became inspired by the island and its (few) inhabitants.
Hours walking, observing, listening: I interviewed people asking them to tell me about memories related to childhood, family, their work; from those who knew, I asked for legends or rituals related to plants, mythological stories; anecdotes of common life, news facts, popular beliefs… because being an “islander” is not taken for granted, especially on an island like Favignana.
By listening I was able to understand human dynamics and their relationship with the territory: I found out who the pirriaturi are* how and why the hypogean gardens were born* what are the natural native “ancient” species that have managed to resist genetic mutation (some of them with curative properties and others lethal).
This series of images would not have come into being if I had not felt mixed emotions during this residency.
Winter is the “real” dimension of the island that revealed to me its true being raw, restless, silent sometimes bestial and sometimes romantic, lonely and dark (in the deepest sense of its meaning) … The word CTONIO* popped up on the third day and from there I decided that whatever I would make would be called that.
I can say that these images were born in the depths of the earth, thanks to the wild presence and silence around it.
Alessia Rollo:
. The book is a work of art: you decided to work in an almost artisanal way with the images. What led you to this decision? Also tell us about the technique you used?
Alessandra Calò:
For me, making a book means producing a “rib” of the work. Not a catalog but a small work of art that can be within everyone’s reach with the same dignity and without discounts. Thanks to the support and the constant presence of my editors in the creative phase (in this case Studiofaganel of Gorizia) the choice of materials – the paper, the cover – and of everything that makes up a book – the editing (by Sara Occhipinti), the choice of graphics (by Andrea Occhipinti) …is aimed at obtaining a unique final product. I have often made art books with a double print run: I like the idea of making something unique by including a photograph printed on special papers as in the case of “Herbarium,” an original glass plate for “Secret Garden I,” a hand-printed calligraphy as the cover in “Secret Garden II.”
In this case, we opted by mutual agreement to manually apply 12 images to each book, on which, however, I intervened manually. I processed about 3900 images, including the cover photo. I worked about 1 month to make all the collateral material and then assemble it.
This stylistic choice proposed by the publisher seemed to me to be optimal right from the start: Studiofaganel, like me, likes impossible challenges, and both of us, without even questioning the difficulty or the amount of work ahead of us, did not hesitate to approve it.
Alessia Rollo:
CTONIO’s images seem to draw the eye away from reality, to make the landscape an uncertain, personal, dreamlike place. What do you want to tell about this underground garden, what did you want the viewer to feel or think about the landscape?
Alessandra Calò:
This project is about a physical place that generates an inner place.
As in all my artistic production, the goal of the image is not to tell about something that is seen. My photography is not documentation of reality but a kind of invitation to go further, to find one’s own meaning and story through the perception of the image.
I wanted to associate this work with the concept of cavity understood as a generative space, whether it is understood as a womb or Sybil’s cavern. There is deliberately a past and a present mingling, creating overlapping subjects that override reality….
[…] For me, making a book means producing a “rib” of the work I intervened manually and processed about 3900 images
Alessia Rollo:
Flipping through the pages we notice that each photo is accompanied by a text. How did the collaboration with Marilena Renda come about?
Alessandra Calò:
Marilena Renda (Sicilian-born poet) I met in 2019. She had worked on my Secret Garden project, bringing to life the story of Lorella, an unpublished voice for an unknown woman depicted on an ancient negative plate.
I had invited her to participate in the project after reading her novel Surrender Doroty! and the poetry collection The Subtraction.
Initially it was just a hypothesis but I felt right away that she was the right person to whom I could entrust my imagery to “reorganize” it into words.
We didn’t even have to make too many changes because they were perfectly “sewn on” to those images and reading them gave exactly that feeling felt while I was in residence. I immediately thought: those who live on the ‘Island know what an island means.
Alessia Rollo:
A question for Marilena Renda: your texts evoke mythological tales, ancestral ties between man and the earth, far away in time. This narrative level amplifies the dimension of the images. What reflections are the texts meant to trigger?
Marilena Renda:
I testi sono nati su sollecitazione di Alessandra, che mentre era sull’isola (io penso a Favignana come a un’isola al quadrato, un’isola ulteriore) mi mandava vocali di conversazioni, mi raccontava di piante, giardini, storie. È stato attraverso i suoi racconti che al lavoro parallelo che ho fatto negli ultimi anni sul mio ctonio siciliano che mi sono in un certo modo ricollegata a questa dimensione da cui negli ultimi anni non mi sono mai allontanata del tutto: la potenza del materno, le storie dei viaggiatori e degli scrittori: per me è sempre tutto lì, a portata di mano, e questo è allo stesso tempo molto bello e abbastanza terribile. Non voglio far scaturire riflessioni, ma penso che sarebbe bello che chi legge agganciasse il suo ctonio, che non fosse poi così distante dalla sua dimensione conscia.
Alessia Rollo:
Alessandra, this book also contains concepts such as natural memory and the need to map places through a material, processual and personal dialogue. What is “sense of nature” right now, what do you think is the relationship to be established between humans and the ecosystem?
Alessandra Calò:
To this question I answer with a quote, “Every day I wake up and the world is to be remade.”
(quoted from “Lorella” by Marilena Renda)
[…] Hours walking, observing, listening: I interviewed people asking them to tell me about memories related to childhood, family, their work
*the pirriaturi, were skilled local diggers (a job that was passed down through the family) who would pick by removing the first surface state of hard rock, bringing out the tuff underneath, which was then cut into blocks in an orthogonal fashion.
*the quarries, which for centuries were a source of construction labor, later “domesticated” and turned into vegetable gardens and orchards. They are currently abandoned and only a few (private ones) repurposed as tourist attractions.
*from Greek χϑόνιος – according to Greek mythology belonging to the abyss, to the terrestrial depths; subterranean deities whose myth was somehow connected with terrestrial or underground life
