IO SONO ARCADIA

This project was born from a human encounter: Arcadia, the alter ego of artist Stefano. Stefano Filipponi and I forged a profound artistic connection between his universe and my lens. Over the past seven years, I’ve had the privilege of documenting the evolution of Arcadia from its inception in 2018 to the present day. An artist’s book and a documentary have already completed the first chapter of this multimedia journey.
2018–2022

Arcadia is more than an alter ego. She is a living embodiment of the tension between vulnerability and power, moving through an active macrocosm of desire and fantasy, chaos and creation, and light and shadow. Stefano, autistic and a stutterer, channels performance and music as acts of poetic self-affirmation and transformation. For him, images are not mere visuals but instruments of becoming. Through Arcadia, archetypal and visionary figures emerge, told through a singular, deliberate gaze. This gaze is shaped through a continuous interplay between the visual arts and other forms of expression, creating a richly layered language of signs. From this convergence, symbols, identities, and visual-historical echoes are staged in a luminous, burning Camp tableau.
Io Sono Arcadia is a liturgy of transformation, a queer rite of re-existence and re-imagination.