Careof presents “Il cielo stellato” (The starry sky) by Caterina Erica Shanta. It is a project that investigates the relationship with the human being, the role of the gaze and its virtual dematerialization guided by images.

The focus of the research and the exhibition is the celebration in honor of the Bruna holy Mary in Matera (Italy). It is a case study analyzed by the artist as an event which is always more and more described by the pictures, that are also witnesses of big historical, social and technological changes. 

“In the crowded square, smartphones and photo-cameras are raised, pointing at the huge Triumphal papier-mâché chariot which is still coming. 

The air is electric and everybody is waiting to the final moment of the ritual. 

Finally the Triumphal chariot showed up into the square, pulled by mules who fasten run directly into the crowd. Disappeared after few minutes under people’s eyes, the triumphal chariot is divided in thousands of fragments, photos and videos. Virtually mirrored trough images by people, the chariot is transformed in a point cloud 3D model, where lights are suspended in the black abstract virtual space. The third starry sky.” - text and translation by Caterina Erica Shanta (http://www.caterinaericashanta.it/works/il-cielo-stellato). 

The exhibition at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan shows the short feature film produced by Careof and Invisible Film. It explains and focuses on this event in Matera with some archive materials gathered by the artist during the months in Basilicata. This, in addition to a cycle created with photogrammetry, a technology that can create general 3D models starting from pictures taken around a central subject. Similarly, over the years Caterina Erica Shanta has collected, through an open call, the pictures taken with phones in the main square of Matera during the final moment of the ritual: the destruction, or the “strazzo”, of the triumphal chariot by the crowd. 

While the chariot is destroyed by thousands of arms, a thousand more hold phones to take pictures: they have unconsciously produced an almost perfect 3D photogrammetry of the main subject that has now vanished.

With “The Starry Sky”, the photographic act becomes an integral part of today’s ritual behavior.

The exhibition was also realized thanks to the contribution of Galleria Indice.