La Fortezza
We have long treated consciousness as an impregnable fortress, locked inside the skull and generated by special, unknown neural circuits. This project attempts to force its doors open and enter, creating an image that can be traced back to the concept of consciousness.
To inhabit with consciousness means approaching the boundary of our existence, moving into a territory where inside and outside merge. It means immersing ourselves in the search for combinations that illuminate how we experience the world. To unravel the interior, we must seek other voices capable of opening passages of clarity and revealing harmonious correspondences.
By bringing together photographs from scientific practice, anatomical images, and elements of the natural world and allowing them to touch, meanings emerge that go beyond simple resonance. Consciousness arises within this choral process of relation, revealing itself as a subtle symmetry that unites mind-body-environment in a circular movement that returns us to an original relationship with the world.
Creating an image of consciousness that restores its natural epiphany is an act of repositioning and reconnection: a gesture that implies stepping beyond human exceptionalism and recognizing ourselves within a broader circle of human and non-human presences, visible and invisible. It is an invitation to imagine other ways of inhabiting the Earth, allowing the connections that have generated us – and continue to generate us – to once again become protagonists of our narrative.
Progetto Giovane Fotografia Italiana #13 – VOCI / VOICES
BIO
Federica Torrenti
Federica Torrenti (Bologna, IT, 1999) is an artist and medical doctor based in Bologna. Her artistic practice is grounded in the concept of intra-action (K. Barad), using photography as a tool to investigate the entangled and dynamic forces between the human and the Other, from which existence itself emerges. Her research integrates elements from biology, philosophy, physics, and the study of the mind. Through images, she questions sensations and perceptions, the intersection between external environments and mental states, and the threshold between the visible and the invisible.
During her training, she began to reconsider the role of neuroscience in the attempt to understand reality. This led her to approach the photographic medium and the use of images in the medical field, eventually beginning her residency in Diagnostic Imaging.
With her project La Fortezza (2025–ongoing), she won the Best Portfolio award at Fotografia Europea and was selected for the Back-and-Forth program at Fonderia 20.9.