COLAPESCE

Our storyteller, his eyes still glistening with the pain of lost love, now tells us the tale of Colapesce.

A fisherman, son of a fisherman, yet so deeply in love with the king’s daughter that he accepts her challenge to retrieve her ring, cast into the deepest depths of the sea.

He does not hesitate to dive into the deep abyss when first a fish and then a sea fan show him the way through corals and caves.

He finds the ring, but as he ascends, he sees one of the columns supporting the island on the verge of collapsing. He has no hesitation; his love for his land is even stronger than carnal love.

Colapesce is still there, supporting one of the columns of the island of Trinacria—now called Sicily—with his shoulders, where his beloved still gazes into the deepest depths, waiting for him to resurface.

Rich in allegories and symbols, the art room winds its way between a chandelier representing the art of fishing and a fish-shaped installation, which leads to a proscenium that evokes the first marine cave where our hero dives, guided by the Blue Bird—another striking ceramic piece from Caltagirone—amidst debris, bedside tables carved from tree trunks, deliberately sparse wooden trinkets, almost like sea wrecks, set against a backdrop of seabed motifs with optical hues and fabrics evoking the island’s sunset.

One enters the bathroom guided by moonlight, a visually striking chandelier that, from the antechamber, overlooks a glass window through which a gorgonian and cementine installation