La Malta dei Papi, Isola Bisentina

“Portrait to the island: melting a rock”
Site-specific installation on Isola Bisentina, Capodimonte
20 June 2023 - 5 November 2023

I presented this work in the occasion of the exhibition “La Malta dei Papi”, a journey into the depths of the Isola Bisentina and her mysterious underground chamber dug into the tuff. The installation is the result of glaze research made with tuffs, lavas and plant ashes collected on the island. The intent was to paint a material picture to Isola Bisentina and its complex stratification of human history and geological transformation.

The island is a fragment of an eruptive mouth of a volcano collapsed around 600.000 years ago, which formed the Bolsena lake. It’s also at the centre of the history of the Etruscans, knowledgeable of physical sciences and particularly attentive to the soil, rocks and underground world. I’ve used the same rocks which played for them such an important spiritual and educational role, the same rocks they carved to build the sacred Malta. They looked at the earth in search of knowledge and magic, similarly to what for me ceramics is all about.

A few bigger spheres, wood fired, where the rock was used as grog were made for the interior of the church on Mt Tabor, while the entrance if filled with 64 glaze test vessels. The large number of vessels allowed to showcase the large variation which emerges from different combination of rocks and temperature.

A big narrative aspect of what I do is entrusted to repetition and sequence, but I throw always the same shape mostly because I love throwing it. It’s almost like it’s the only possible form for me.

Symbolically, the research is presented on the highest point of the island, Mt Tabor, above and geometrically reflecting the circular Malta chamber and her tunnel, inviting us to look inside the earth.