STEFANO CERIO
Redemption of Nature
Curated by Arianna Catania
A narrative that brings together ecology, landscape and transformation, acknowledging art’s active role in reflecting on climate change and in the cultural regeneration of territories. Redemption of Nature focuses on Mediterranean areas affected by wildfires and on the processes of regeneration that slowly move through the landscape after trauma. The artist observes nature not as a simple backdrop, but as a living and reactive organism, capable of overcoming wounds and generating new forms. The images produced in Sicily and Sardinia – territories deeply marked by the wildfires of recent years – thus develop a reflection on the relationship between human intervention, climate crisis and the memory of the landscape. In this suspension between destruction and rebirth, the project avoids any documentary rhetoric, moving instead within a more layered dimension, where reality intertwines with a visionary perception of the territory. The use of Phos-Chek – the red fire retardant employed in major forest fires – becomes an ambiguous presence: this artificially coloured substance, which chemically modifies combustion and leaves an intense, almost unreal trace on the vegetation, runs through the images as an element connecting human control, environmental fragility and the visual memory of disaster. Cerio thus constructs an altered landscape in which nature reveals its capacity for resistance and metamorphosis.
BIO
Stefano Cerio (Rome, 1962) lives and works between Rome and Paris. Since 2001, he has worked in the field of research photography and video, developing an investigation into places of entertainment, tourism and collective representation, often emptied of human presence. Throughout his career, he has exhibited in numerous museums, foundations and galleries in Italy and abroad. Venues that have presented his work include MAXXI in Rome and MAXXI L’Aquila, Fondazione Forma in Milan, Museo MADRE, Museo Pignatelli and Studio Trisorio (Naples), CAMERA-Centro Italiano per la Fotografia and Noire gallery (Turin), Pron galerie and the Italian Cultural Institute (Paris), Nrw Dusseldorf, and Palazzo Collicola Spoleto. His projects have been published by major publishers, including Quodlibet, Contrasto and Hatje Cantz.
The project is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2025, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture in collaboration with MudaC- Museo delle Arti Carrara and Fondazione Orestiadi.