Antonello Ferrara

Within the restraints of our fast-paced social era, we move through a variety of landscapes without actually experiencing them nor learning about them. The rhythm of awareness is attentive, thought-out, made up of pauses that embrace enquiry.

At times, finding an escape from the system stems from a simple, child-like, almost ordinary act: looking up to the sky.Antonello Ferrara accomplishes this act and invites us to do the same through the images captured by his cellular device. In the context of a present-day narrative, he outlines vertical trajectories which change into surreal curves as he chases a personal memory of himself as a child eager to discover the genesis of clouds.

His childhood on the seafront of Taranto leads him to fall in love with the frothy masses born out of the Ilva steel plant. As an adult he moves to Priolo, a small cityin the Augusta Bay area, in the heart of what was once Europe’s largest petrochemical complex.This was the very place where, every morning, a single, barren cloud would appear and placidly dance before his eyes. He would later bear witness to the same type of recurring appearance and his thoughts would wander into paradox.

A natural phenomenon, conceived both through the certainty and unpredictability of the elements from which it originates, became a timely display, an atmospheric apparition against the backdrop of both sky and factory. Life below the clouds simply wenton, oblivious to intricate and less complex scientific matters, and sheltered bya blue tinge that seems to belong to an unvaried palette of our lives. The artist, however, didnot abandon the idea of this celestial (re)appearance.

He waits for the cloud as though it were a lover. He trails it and captures its extemporary and shifting existence: one hour during the winter months and only five minutes after the summer solstice. We are therefore able to follow the cloud as well, through the immediacy of the photographs which do not render us mere viewers but interpreters, travelling companions strolling through town streets, passengers in the same car, excited teenagers catching glimpses and hiding behind a door as soon as the white fractal appears and interrupts our groundless monotony. No space holds a voluntary rhetoric of the image, but rather, an instinctual poetic accretion tightly bound to the matrix of memory.In our present-day age in which the galleryof our cell phone seems only to obey the logic of social network esthetics, as well asthe ellipsis of language within the context of interpersonal communication, Ferrara has chosen to move away from the dispersive nature of instant messaging and from the sprint to backup files, choosing instead to channel imagination, raisingquestions about the landscapes we will inhabit, spaces duplicating Nature,all the while altering its processes and its elementsforever.

 

Bio

Antonello Ferrara was born in Taranto, into a family of sailors and painters.

At the age of ten, he is given his first camera, an Agfa Pocket. He enrolls in the Marina Militare (Navy) and begins to travel the world. In 1992 he is sent to Augusta, an important naval base and site of the largest chemical complex in the Mediterranean. After a few years dedicated to social engagement, namely his work with Libera, an anti-mafia association, and Legambiente, which promotes the safeguarding of the environment, he edits the book “Custodi della nostra Terra” (Akàdemos Edizioni), an analysis of the Cancer Registry of the province of Siracusa.

The Navy relocates him to Rome in 2014 to work for the Press Office. Here, he reconnects to the world of photography. He attends several courses operated by the CSF Adams and the Scuola Romana di Fotografia. From this point onwards, he frequently takes part in photography workshops and training courses. In 2019, he goes back to Sicily for work and settles in Priolo Gargallo, in the province of Siracusa.

Four years later, he founds the “Onirica” Collective in Catania and opens “Onirica Spazio Creativo”, a space which houses art exhibitions and photography training courses. Exhibitions Portfolio “Il cielo sopra Priolo”, “Circuito Off del Castelnuovo Fotografia”, Castelnuovo di Porto (Roma); Portfolio “Il cielo sopra Priolo”, “Circuito Off del Castelnuovo Fotografia”, Castelnuovo di Porto (Roma);Portfolio “Il cielo sopra Priolo”, Gibellina Photo Road, Gibellina (TP);Portfolio “Rosso rabbia”, Colline Photo Festival, Torino.