Ivan Terranova's series focuses on an aspect that is often kept silent in photography. That is, those who make images, even unconsciously, recall symbolic complexes that manifest meanings originating from archaic humanity. Some historians of religions speak of perennial images, archetypes, which survive civilizations by masking behind their respective historical situations.
With the series 'When The Pleiades Arise' (2018), this simulacrum is explicitly staged. The Pleiades are a cluster of stars belonging to the constellation of Taurus. They have been known since antiquity thanks to their brightness. Also called the 'Seven Sisters' they have provided lifeblood to mythology and therefore to literature. For their visibility, in many cultures, and in different eras they have represented a substantial reference, a spiritual cardinal point influencing beliefs, rituals, calendars.
Ivan Terranova associates the rise of the Pleiades with the sacred value of the megaliths. The use of large stones which since ancient times have responded to various reasons, including astronomical ones, and often to the need to guarantee survival next to ancestors' memories. It's interesting that behind the contemporary need to upset the world with neverending constructions and infrastructures is hidden an intimate need to survive death.
In the luminous spheres that give life to a crepuscular installation, as in ritual practice, we discover not so much a foreign body but the compassion of light that helps us reflect on our deep darkness. A night that with the irreverent modernity has become more dense and gloomy, and has deprived the human being of that sacred and mythological time which was not an escape in itself, but the gateway to a more open world.
