The artist’s Sicilian jaunt eschews luxury hotels in favor of spontaneous boat trips, local patron-saint feasts, and art exhibitions you can wander into straight from the sea

By Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan, the art world’s most celebrated provocateur—and the man behind the Art Basel duct-taped banana—first visited Filicudi 30 years ago, when the remote island still relied on donkeys for transport and had neither running water nor electricity. He now spends much of each summer at his house there—with no Internet connection, no television, and few modern distractions—hopping between islands, eating well, and catching up with old friends.

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ilicudi, the second smallest of the Aeolian Islands—floating in the deep sea just north of Sicily—refuses easy arrivals. That’s one of its best qualities. There are different ways to get there, whether from Milazzo, in Sicily, Reggio Calabria, or READ ON