Federico Clavarino, Ghost Stories, 2021

The Frioul archipelago is located in front of the gulf of Marseille and includes four islands: Ratonneau to the north, Pomègues to the south, If to the east and Tiboulen to the west. With the passing of time, the islands in question have been the scene of events which although apparently unrelated to each other, still showed a certain link. In 1516 King Francis I ordered the construction of a fortress on the island of If, which was then used as a prison in the seventeenth century. Its most famous prisoner was Edmond Dantès, the protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Inside one of his cells, it is still possible to see a hole made in a wall by Dantès in an attempt to escape. On January 24, 1516 the first rhinoceros ever seen in Europe landed at Ratonneau. The animal was sent to Pope Leo X and Francis I, King of France, hurried to admire the beast. During the journey to Rome, the ship encountered a violent storm and sank. Albrecht Dürer later made a woodcut of it from a sketch that had been sent to him. On July 31, 1944, Luftwaffe pilot Horst Rippert shot down a P-38 Lightning, which fell into the waters of the archipelago along with its unfortunate pilot, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A bracelet bearing his name was found by a fisherman in his net while fishing near Pomegues decades later. Ghost Stories is thus a work that aims to weave together all these events, which happened in the same space but at different times.