Projects for Volcanic Attitude

IN RESEARCH RESIDENCY
Since 2018, Rachele Maistrello has been working on The Diamond Saga, a project that investigates the relationship between humans and nature through a speculative use of photography and scientific inquiry. Structured in narrative chapters, it addresses urgent contemporary issues: Green Diamond explores the desire for synthetic interfaces aimed at amplifying bodily perception; Blue Diamond examines the need for transcendence through immersive and synesthetic experiences; while Black Diamond (2024–2025) investigates the connections between genetic and cognitive heritage. Each chapter corresponds to a stage in the existence of the artist’s alter ego, Gao Yue, and consists of a series of interdependent works that together form a meticulous archive of testimonies. The boundary between truth and fiction in these works is deliberately blurred: silver gelatin prints, documents, and slides serve as seemingly irrefutable evidence, yet they are in fact the result of a skilled process of fabrication—one that appropriates scientific and historical sources, particularly from neuroscience and biology, through the creative process.

Each chapter of the “Saga” corresponds to a color-element, which serves as a symbolic interface for an epistemological dimension.
Green, Blue, and Black respectively investigate the dimensions of natural and synthetic interfaces, the abyssal—watery—realm, and the domain of rocks and the depths of caves.
Each color-diamond is, in fact, both an element and a spiritual dimension of our essence as human beings.

The next diamond will explore the dimension of volcanoes, magma, and transformative temperatures. Red Diamond will therefore involve a series of field and theoretical investigations in volcanology, essential for the creation of a new and ambitious chapter of the Saga.