Heat and Solitude. In dialogue with Federica Di Carlo

As part of Volcanic Attitude, a contemporary culture festival between Naples and the Aeolian Islands, now in its fourth edition, held between 24 and 28 June 2025, Federica Di Carlo presented the environmental installation Heat and Solitude on the edge of the crater of Vulcano, realized in collaboration with INGV- Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia. In this “extreme environment”, unsuitable for art as well as for people, stand two sculptures of feet with the soles facing the sky, supported by two tubes that sink into the fumarole below, whose fumes contributed to the final appearance of the work by producing chemical reactions with the sculptural material. The feet, symbolising the god Vulcan, who was born crippled, have different textures: one is made of white bronze, which the volcanic substances have darkened and changed, while the other is made of incredible molten sulphur, yellow and shiny, inert through fusion.

Di Carlo collaborated with Francesco Sortino, volcanologist at the INGV, but also with the volcano itself, producing an almost totemic “six-handed” work, silhouetted against the sky but deeply earthly, balancing science and myth, a magnet between the kairos of events, the festival, the encounter with Sortino, the progress of the work’s genesis, the aion of Vulcan and the mysticism from which it takes its name, immutable and inexhaustible, and the kronos of our earthly life, from which he captures an essential element that unites all the protagonists of this work, and therefore all of us: loneliness.

If the “heat” of the title is easily traceable to the hic et nunc of the installation, “loneliness” is evoked, but it is precisely from this evocation that the invisible threads branch out, transforming those feet into a mirror. The loneliness of the god Vulcan, a true divine artist, forger of weapons and jewellery but also a sculptor, echoes in that of the other two roles that took part in the work: that of the artists, intent on building perceptual traps and picklocks in their studio, and that of the volcanologists, studying the soul of the earth in inaccessible and dangerous territories. But solitude becomes a mirror of the world, an element increasingly present in the daily lives of each of us, in an increasingly technological, increasingly automatic, increasingly comfortable reality, which as a counterbalance produces a disturbing isolation, a self-inflicted ontological malaise. In conclusion, a multifaceted and fascinating work that squares the circle between the personal and the social, art and science, ontology and epistemology. Those feet turned towards the sky, difficult to reach, alpha of thoughts and sensations, demonstrate the qualities of the artistic product, clarifying the meaning of the work at a time when its accumulation on omega is becoming increasingly evident. Thoughts and feelings about the meaning of art, loneliness and reality today. Complex questions that we ask the artist directly:

Fabio Giagnacovo: HEAT & SOLITUDE is a work created by six hands: yours, those of volcanologist Francesco Sortino, and those of the volcano itself, and therefore of the god Vulcan (Hephaestus in Greek mythology), god of fire who drives away evil spirits but also of destructive fire, metallurgy, engineering and sculpture. A true artist who seems to follow much more closely the idea of contemporary art, heterogeneous, more “real” and less lyrical, than Apollo and the Muses, Greek symbols of the absolute artistic ideal. He also shapes thinking creatures from inanimate materials, true cyborgs, opening himself up to the digital world like Pygmalion. Do you believe that, little by little, the cosmos that we can define with the term “Art” has gone from being Apollo to being Vulcan, brilliant and isolated, despised by the gods and justifiably resentful (after all, he was thrown from the top of Mount Olympus by his own mother as soon as he was born)?

Federica Di Carlo: When I was invited to create a site-specific work for Volcanic Attitude on the island of Vulcano, the first thing I asked myself was why this volcano did not have a real name like other volcanoes such as Stromboli, Etna, etc. I discovered that the volcano on the island of Vulcano gives its name to all volcanoes in the world, thanks to the figure of the god Vulcan. The feeling of loneliness seems to arise in the mythological tale from this god, who was born crippled, the only one among the gods who was not beautiful and who was therefore thrown into the sea by his superficial mother, Hera. In an Olympus made up of pomp, vice, caprice, narcissism, exaggerated and ostentatious beauty, where appearances are almost always deceptive and have consequences even for the gods themselves, who want everything and want it now… very similar to today’s society; I find that an anti-hero of this kind is more necessary than an Apollo. His loneliness becomes the state of creation but also a memento of a state of society apparently hidden behind screens… in constant fear of showing it. Instead, it is necessary to welcome it and go through it in order to use it as a tool for rebirth and understanding of what is happening around us. I feel much more like Hephaestus than Apollo. We need this state of honesty in art more than the mere form and deception and superficiality of much art today, which appears and disappears with fashions.

HEAT & SOLITUDE, as the title suggests, also deals with loneliness. Undoubtedly, it has the dual significance of being both a destructive and creative force. A catalyst for the creative process, when it spills over into that “desert of the real”, as Mark Fisher would say, which is the system in which we exist, it becomes the absolute cul de sac. After all, we only recognise ourselves in others, relating to them through similarities and differences. It is disturbing how, especially after the pandemic saga, more and more people naturally tend to isolate themselves (leaving aside the simulacrum of technological hyper-connection) by constructing a complex self-referential system. Do you agree? How do you relate to loneliness and how do you think customary variations in this regard impact the world?

Loneliness is a complex yet simple feeling, but one that makes many people uncomfortable today because we are not born as solitary beings. We have isolated ourselves in the parallel lives we create in the fake narrative of our lives on social media, where this side can never be shown. It is precisely this exile of the feeling of loneliness that makes it re-emerge and be more contemporary than ever; everything that is suffocated, buried deep like magma, re-emerges without warning and in a devastating way. We have forgotten the other side of loneliness, the one to be savoured, the one that has to do with our antennae connected to the Nature-World system; which is ultimately the state of the artist, the only possible state of creation because it is in those moments that we can act as a filter and forge only what remains essential at that moment. It is a condition that I personally seek and without which I cannot imagine my works.

In creating this work, you collaborated with a volcanologist for the first time, but you often collaborate with scientists of various kinds in the realisation of your works, which are often multifaceted, blending nature and culture (both of which are recognisable in both scientific and humanistic terms). Recently, we have witnessed a proliferation of collaborations between artists and computer engineers in which the figure of the “scientist” is purely technical and subordinate. In projects such as HEAT & SOLITUDE, on the other hand, there is clearly a team effort. Cosmos that appear distant coexist naturally in your works thanks to this type of collaboration. One might think that the genesis of the visualised thought that gives life to the work follows a tortuous path, as it is based on a series of unknowns and changing elements, colliding with facts and hypotheses in the same way as the scientific method, somehow growing with a concreteness that is alien to the Saturnine and Dionysian approach of a certain type of art that coexists with yours. Is this the case? And is it so important to be rooted in reality?

HEAT & SOLITUDE was born first and foremost from an exchange between two human beings on the crater rim of a volcano, and I believe this is the basis and premise of almost all my work. Then comes the element of knowledge, which can be artistic, scientific or natural, which, just like the chemical elements of the volcano, depending on how they are combined, how they meet, how they merge with each other, generate new possibilities that no one had seen before. Collaborating with volcanologist Francesco Sortino of the INGV was fundamental for me to be able to imagine a sculpture in open dialogue with the volcano. This also meant sacrificing some control over the work, but this is something I have been doing in my research for a long time. Reaching out to the laws that govern us and using them in a poetic (and not scientific) way is something that attracts me and gives me, like the vapours that escape from the bowels of the earth, that sense of reaching towards the sky to make art in order to understand and feel ourselves in the world. Like the magma itself that creates the earth on which we walk today. There was a period of gestation together with Francesco, and also an experimental part in which we tested materials on the fumaroles of the volcano to understand how far I could push my idea of sculptures. With his help and open-mindedness, we did something unique in terms of both materials and artistry, because I was able to forge a foot in sulphur, which is not at all easy and I don’t think has ever been done before in contemporary art. I also forged another one in white bronze, which, when it came into contact with the chemical agents from the subsoil brought by Francesco and the performer to the sculpture itself, changed and transformed its final colour. The result, which we expected to be different from a chemical point of view, took on an unexpected colour, creating a new scientific, artistic and poetic wonder. It was a real six-handed work with the god Vulcan.