Living on an island is not an escape from the world, but a way of welcoming another form of it.
(Jean Grenier)
In a remote corner of Stromboli, among lava rocks and briny winds, lives a young woman in symbiosis with the island: Arsa. Raised on the margins of the inhabited world, with neither father nor mother, she lives in a shack near a rusted iron structure that resembles a shipwreck, filled with deformed dolls, tied with string and colorful threads. Her existence is marked by ritual gestures: she collects marine debris, cleans it with obsessive care, and transforms it into unsettling objects, suspended between creature and sculpture. She sells nothing. Asks for nothing. Far from everything, she lives with the water up to her neck.
When small groups of visitors wander across the island searching for the mythical “Casa Luna,” Arsa watches them hidden among the bushes, using an old ship’s telescope left to her by her father. She studies the tourists from a distance, as one might observe animals in an unfamiliar habitat. To her, they are not human presences, but dissonant echoes of a noisy and elusive elsewhere.
In the past, her father, a craftsman of decorative sculptures for demanding clients, had taught her how to mold clay and blend words with matter. But one day, after an argument with a customer, he smashed every figurine with a hammer, saying: “This isn’t real. It’s only what they expect from us.” Since then, Arsa has continued on her own, searching for an aesthetic that is not accommodating, but radical. An aesthetic capable of containing horror, ambiguity, and the abyss.
Every day, she dives into the sea until she’s out of breath, staying underwater as if trying to return to a primordial womb. There, among broken amphorae and human remains, she finds material for her monsters. Fragile and powerful figures, assembled without apparent logic, yet full of meaning—like dreams carved from silence.
One day, three young film students accidentally end up in the reserve. They’re looking for stories, landscapes, inspiration. Someone tells them about a strange girl who lives alone and builds “weird things.” Curiosity drives them to seek her out, but she remains elusive—refusing, hiding. One of their birthdays becomes an excuse to invite her, but Arsa doesn’t accept. She simply watches them from afar, listening to the surreal song of a beach vendor selling inflatable toys, who sings childish melodies like plastic laments.
Meanwhile, the students talk about cinema, about directors who trusted dreams or even mediums to write their films. They discuss whether it’s truly possible to know someone, and whether “non-connections” might be a kind of connection themselves. Arsa listens without being seen. Memories of her childhood resurface: her father telling her fairy tales about monsters as they shaped earth and words together. And the day when it all ended.
In one final dive, Arsa plunges deeper than ever before. The liquid world wraps around and engulfs her. Down there, in the muffled sound and visible nothingness, she seems to finally encounter something: a truth, perhaps. Not the artifact, not the sellable object, but what resists form: the beauty of authenticity.
She no longer creates to please or to wound: she creates to exist.
And that—though no one may understand it—is already enough.
Her quest for the beauty and monstrosity her father once spoke of is not ornamental: it is the beauty of the abyss, and it is anything but harmless.
It is not fiction, nor commission, but a search, a rupture—because we are not what they ask of us, but what we discover in ourselves.
Art is the salvation of rejected matter.
(Anselm Kiefer)
.png?locale=en "Happy End")
.jpg?locale=en "L Angelo Del Crimine")
.jpg?locale=en "Monica")
