I wanted to call my project χθόνιος (chthonic in Greek) because I started from the depths of the earth and the darkness to tell a story.
The story is my personal vision of the island of Favignana, which welcomed me, and is the result of hours of walking, observing and listening to all the elements that make up the island: the land, nature, the people. In this precise order, I have tried to construct (or perhaps recompose) a series of events that have contributed to making this place unique.
I started from the rocks that the "pirriaturi" (diggers) dug out to expose the limestone. In this place, past and present mix with facts, legends, possible truths and distant mythologies. (Alessandra Calò)
χθόνιος | Chthonic (2024) is the latest work by Alessandra Calò. On display are 7 images printed in oleotype, an ancient bromolithic printing technique dating back to the end of the 19th century, handmade by the artist on cotton paper. The exhibition is completed by 2 fine art prints, selected from the entire series of 20 images, together with the 7 oleotypes. Critical text by Lóránd Hegyi, former director of the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne (France).
Oleotyping is a lengthy process, halfway between engraving and photographic printing, which requires the application of successive layers of greasy ink to reveal the latent image. A technical process that seems to echo the complexity and layering of memory, a theme close to the artist's heart, along with that of identity.
The quarries of Favignana, once a place of economic exploitation, have now been regenerated and, in the richness of their subterranean vegetation, have recovered the sedimented memory of those who inhabited them and made them unique. It is no coincidence that the title of the project, χθόνιος | chthonic, which means 'underground, belonging to the depths of the earth', takes us into a dimension where dialogue with the place is inseparable from reflection on identity.
The hypogeum garden thus becomes the symbolic door through which artistic practice passes: the morphological and anthropological study of the area and the discovery of ancient indigenous plant species confirm the existence of an ancient bond between man and nature, a bond that can still be felt in the warmth of the sun-dried stones and in the deafening silence of the wilderness.
As Lóránd Hegyi writes in his critical essay "Messages of The Island's Darkness. Some Notes on Alessandra Calò's χθόνιος (chthonic)": "While following the artist's digging deeper and deeper in the black, impenetrable masses of earth and stone and ashes and bones, the viewer feels more and more involved, even helplessly imprisoned in a dark and worrisome universe which offers unexpected matters and which delivers hidden stories and forgotten events from the times long before any artistic engagement took place. We could also say that this artistic interest vitalizes the reminiscences and unidentifiable discoveries and creates a plausible when not provable history. Through the artistic intervention, a history incarnates from the dead material."
Previously shown only at Unseen, Amsterdam (September 2024) and Approche, Paris (November 2024), χθόνιος | Chthonic is shown for the first time in Italy.
