Coprifuoco
In 2020 and 2021 Perrone was living in Sicily where she could observe the frequent eruptions of Mt. Etna and Stromboli from her home. A particularly active volcanic period took place in 2021 and Coprifuoco interprets her observations by the use of cliche-verre smoke drawings she made of volcanoes on glass that get exposed to photographic paper. These photographs are bearing witness to something real and experienced but confuse our notion of the veracity and reliability of the photograph by retaining the hand-drawn interpretation of the event rather than relying on the camera’s eye.
Coprifuoco interprets the artist’s observations of eruptions of Mt. Etna from her home in Sicily during periods of curfew and lockdown through use of cliche-verre smoke drawings created by covering a flame with glass and manipulating the soot before exposing to photosensitized paper. Meaning ‘curfew’ in Italian, also ‘cover flame’, coprifuoco alludes to air raids during WWII that marred the landscape and left unexploded munitions buried in the fields and ruins of homes on the periffery of town. These photographs bear witness to something real and experienced but confuse our notion of the veracity and reliability of the photograph as an authentic, objective artefact by retaining the hand-drawn interpretation of the event rather than relying on a camera’s eye.
Overexposed prints became chemigrams resembling black volcanic obsidian. Painterly deletions in the image were then hand-colored. The resulting series, Things of this Earth, evokes lava fields where pioneer plants grow, transforming the lava rock into fertile soil, recalling the traditional decorative art of "pietra dura", or Italian marble inlay, and the work of Korean artist Shin Saimdang during the Joseon period.