Biography

First steps

Here I am. I started drawing as a child.

At home we were allowed to draw with chalk on the outside walls of the walls. I remember spending afternoons copying drawings of Mickey Mouse or cartoon characters. Drawing is still a practice that relaxes me and keeps me calm.

Then at school I discovered technical drawing and the planning behind its creation. From there I chose to enroll in construction engineering/architecture in Bologna. At the same time, however, I have always felt the need to express myself more freely and I started attending the B. Ramenghi art school in Bagnacavallo. It is a small local municipal school where different techniques are practiced. Here I started to paint in oil, immediately orienting myself toward the abstract.

Then over the years, I have gained experience in engraving and chalcographic techniques, while more recently I have been dedicating myself to sculpture and installation, even of large dimensions. We can say that the “first steps” of my artistic making are due to an innate need that I have always felt and tried to listen to.

How my works come to life

I am a forge, I literally give shape to objects and new images to better understand what they are and what I feel. I feel a need, so I build and make my work available to anyone who is interested: it’s a sort of exchange that always has a strong emotional impact. Furthermore, what I collect I reinvest in a new job, which leads me to grow and give birth to new relationships.

I can work well in my laboratory alone, but with the radio on.

I also have moments when I don’t produce, but simply go to the studio to observe and smell the pieces I’m working on. Smelling activates my thoughts: I sit, observe, breathe and try to understand which direction, for example, a painting should take. Then I get up and put down a list of activities to carry out and, in a very rational way, I organize the following days. The next day I enter the studio and immediately start working using the previous day’s list as a track. I try to leave the studio always leaving a to-do list for next time.

Comparison with other artists

I often feel the need for a comparison with other artists, so I try to maintain active relationships with those I know in the local area. I am interested in how others work and over the years I have tried to activate collaborations, first with the Collettivo Morelli Mazzesi, where I collaborated for a few years together with the artist and curator Gianni Mazzesi, then I started managing an independent space together with my aunt Caterina, also an artist and Arianna Zama. The space is called Casa Baldassarri, it is in Bagnacavallo and is the home of my maternal grandparents. Together we organize exhibitions and cultural events, we invite other artists, and friends… it is becoming an interesting and stimulating place from the point of view of relational exchanges and ideas. Since 2014 I have also been collaborating with the CRAC association, at the moment we are managing a cultural space in Villa Verlicchi, Lavezzola.

I always compare myself with the greats of art, to learn.

First of all, there is Francis Bacon, then Mattia Moreni and Velda Ponti, and Cy Twombly, for the material, use they make of paint and the power of gesture and color. I also follow the work of Daniel Richter, Andreas Golder, and Alessandro Pessoli. The painting of the Leipzig school, on the other hand, interests me for the way in which these artists organize space and construct the scene within the canvas. For sculpture and installation, I can mention Tatiana Trouvè, Franz West, and Jannis Kounellis among the first. I really like the irreverence of Carsten Höller and Thomas Hirschhorn…and so many others.

I try to keep up to date with the work of emerging artists as well, I like to discuss and I’m curious.

My art style

When I paint, before starting, I structure the work on the canvas, draw lines and try to build a scene. Immediately after I build and better define the space using acrylic, pencils, charcoal, and oil pastels. Only later do I start using the oil color, with which I feel better. I like its softness, transparency, its materiality, I also apply it directly with my hands, I like getting dirty. I love material painting when the gesture amplifies its power: that’s what I’m looking for.

I also love complementary colors, strong and bright colors, and the contrast with the softness that can be obtained with oil paint.

When I deal with installations, however, my approach changes. I become very rational, I try to express a concept by interlocking shapes, using objects declined in different functions. Even here, however, I always look for contrast or enhance the ironic aspect.

For example, I like making copies and plaster casts of shapes or objects that have lost their function. From the casts, I produce sculptures using black and white refractory clay or earthenware.

The theme of family and motherhood

I started making sculptures at home, with my children, during my maternity leave. I didn’t know how to pass the time and tried to invent ways to be with them while continuing my artistic work. So one day, with the house invaded by toys, plastic sheep, jars, and tetra packs, I started using this material to assemble sculptures that replicated human figures. They helped me, we played together. We cut a pack of old Touring Club maps and guidebooks into squares and used them to coat the sculptures, then added a little pink acrylic paint where needed. From that moment I started making these “concretions”, anthropomorphic sculptures made of recycled materials and household waste that recall body parts, artificial and plastic organs, uteruses, livers, and stomachs.

The theme of family and motherhood returns to some extent in all my work, from painting to installation. When I paint I use my children’s photographs as a basis, they are often the main subjects portrayed. I deform their bodies and limbs, use a lot of pink, and try to enhance their “fleshiness”. I like to portray them in crouched positions, with elbows out, knees bare, in the act of play. But then I modify the settings trying to recreate alienating and disturbing scenes, where for example the sand becomes blood and thoughts flow from the sky.

In the installations, the theme of family and family relationships returns. Here, however, I approach everything differently, trying to enhance or overturn social roles, or I work on emotion and try to translate it into space using little or a lot of material, little or a lot of color, “by removing or putting in”. When I “feel” that a balance is created between the parts, I stop. It is a design method that I acquired at university, during the architecture courses in Bologna: we were assigned a theme, and with the available materials we had to solve it in a project. It’s a bit like solving a rebus, sometimes you find the solution immediately, and other times it takes months.

About my life

• She is an Italian artist born in Lugo (RA) in 1978.
• She graduated in Engineering and Architecture in 2005 at the Alma Mater Studiorum University, Bologna (Italy).
• Lives and works in Russi, near Ravenna (Italy).
• In 2014 he founded the Collettivo Instabile, an independent artistic collective with Gianni Mazzesi.
• In 2018 he founded Casa Baldassarri, a new space for artists in Bagnacavallo, Italy.
• Collaborates and manages an artistic research space with the independent artistic group CRAC.

The exhibitions

• Sogno Liquido, curated by Veronica Bassani and Filippo Maestroni, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Faenza – 2021
• Taking apart memories, curated by Sandra Pattin, Francesca Morozzi, Chiasso perduto, Firenze – 2021
• IOTUNOI, curated by Collettivo Instabile Morelli Mazzesi & CRAC, DART Villa Verlicchi, Lavezzola IT – 2020
• Welcome to the Machine, curated by Francesca Canfora, Festival della Tecnologia, Politecnico di Torino – 2019
• COMBAT Prize, Museo Fattori, Livorno
• Arte Laguna Prize, curated by Igor Zanti, Nappe dell’Arsenale, Venezia
• Paratissima Art Talents, curated by Francesca Canfora, Castello Visconteo, Novara (IT) – 2018
• Mettersi a nudo, curated by Gabriele Pantaleo and Ludovica Romano, N.I.C.E. Paratissima Torino, Caserma La Marmora
• Figure del vuoto, solo show, Chiesa in Albis, Russi, RA
• Merzbau Fotografie, curated by Giulia Marchi, Santevincenzi2 Bologna – Art White Night
• Love is in the air?, solo show, curated by Collettivo Instabile Morelli Mazzesi, Centro Culturale “Carlo Venturini”, Massa Lombarda – 2017
• #Rivoluzione03, curated by Giulia Marchi, SiFEST Off
• Post Places. Dove vanno le lumache, curated by CRAC Arte per ScrittuRA Festival, S. Maria delle Croci Ravenna e Sala delle Pescherie LugO
• Arte Laguna Prize, curated by Igor Zanti, Nappe dell’Arsenale, Venezia
• ARTROOMS LONDON (collettivo instabile-Morelli Mazzesi), curated by Le Dame Gallery, Melia White House Hotel London – 2016
• Traume sind schaume (I sogni sono schiuma), via Mazzini 88 Bagnacavallo, a cura di Galleria Instabile
• CONCREZIONI-mapping our differences, Gianni Mazzesi e Maria Giovanna Morelli – Oratorio S. Sebastiano Forlì, a cura di Galleria Instabile – 2015
• CONCREZIONI, via Mazzini 88 Bagnacavallo, a cura di Galleria Instabile
• HeartQuake Wop 2.0 Rigiocati Crevalcore curated by CRAC

Publications

• FINE ZINE – 2020
• OBSzine#7 – 2018