Formafantasma and Dzek are included in ‘Terreno. Tracce del disponibile quotidiano’ at the MAXXI in L’Aquila, Italy, open from its site of Palazzo Ardinghelli, and curated by Lisa Andreani. The recently opened museum is an outpost of the MAXXI in Rome, a public funded institution designed by Zaha Hadid, with a remit for showcasing the best of Italian and international art, architecture and photography from the 21st century.

L’Aquila, high up in the Abruzzese Appennines that run like a spine from central Italy to the boot of the peninsula, was ravaged by an earthquake in 2009. To this day, many of its monuments remain unused and in danger of collapse, such as the 13th-century Church of Santa Maria Paganica, which, together with Palazzo Ardinghelli and MAXXI L’Aquila, flanks the main piazza in the town’s historic centre.

An important, now sensitively restored late-Baroque palazzo, it hosts a permanent collection of works from the MAXXI collections alongside regular temporary exhibitions such as 'Terreno', on show from December 8th to May 4th 2025. The Italian word terreno refers to both the notion of territory and to a physical landscape, and it is to both conceptions that the exhibition plays by means of a multidisciplinary approach covering materiality and memory, cultural traditions and artistic practices, everyday rituals and historical documents. Inspired by Italian writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati's 'accessible everyday’ – the titular disponibile quotidiano – the exhibition takes the visitor on a journey dedicated to the scenes, landscapes and gestures from the everyday world that often go unnoticed.

Formafantasma contributed to the exhibition with the installation in room N17 of a suspended floor made in ExCinere, the volcanic ash glazed tiles launched in collaboration with Dzek in 2019. Heavy with dark earth-brown glazes, the structure is evocative of the dramatic volcanic landscape surrounding Mount Etna. It acts as a reminder that, as humans, we are in possession of a long-held visceral fascination with the volcano, the inspiration for a centuries-old tradition of the use of volcanic matter as an architectural material.