Alessandra Calò: CTONIO (signed & numbered)

In this photographic series created in the extraordinary setting of the Mediterranean, the artist Alessandra Calò tries once again – in a poetic and evocative way – to use the photographic medium as a tool to document yes the state of the places but above all to dig in the memory and leverage the need to re-establish that ancestral bond that binds man to nature. It is no coincidence that the title of the Ctonio project accompanies us in a dimension where dialogue with the place cannot be separated from a reflection on identity.

The importance of nature – today more perceptible than ever in the contemporary Mediterranean landscape – leads the artist to question the history behind the infinite expressions it offers to the eye, in an attempt to regain possession of the spaces generated by the man. In the last century, economic policies have stimulated the occupation and exploitation of the territories, gradually canceling most of the characteristic features of the Mediterranean area to outline new ones.

The rapid transformations of the territory have produced the current image of a landscape ‘cable ’, characterized by defaced areas for the exploitation of the raw material: limestone (calcarenite). Assuming that man has always been accustomed to seeing Nature from the point of view of profit, we realize that he rarely realizes the relationship that exists with the complexity of the environment to which he is a part. He is therefore inclined to believe that nature tames itself by exploiting it to benefit from it as long as there is an advantage.

At the end of the years ‘50 the phenomenon of migration to less hostile places and more profitable jobs led to the depopulation of large areas and the population was literally replaced by an important wild presence, which re-appropriated the space, restoring that complex and self-sufficient ecosystem that only the enigmatic law of Nature could restore.

The space that was once “crossroads and planning place ” today regenerates and returns – in the richness of its vegetation – the sedimented memory of those who inhabited it and made it a unique place of its kind.

ALL TEXT IN ITALIAN