(Hgtomi Rosa) (CV) (Artist Statement Archive)
(Artworks) (Presentations) (Performances)
Daniele Formica
 I was too young to remember the first time I visited the Etruscan Necropoli della Banditaccia near Cerveteri, IT, but the images from the books I found in my grandmother's library in October 2020 immediately caught my attention. I was particularly drawn by the photo of a Tumulo -a specifically shaped structure that presented an entrance leading underground to the sepulchre. The vegetation that had grown around and on top of the tomb gave me a hint for life continuation, as if the disintegration of a body meant acceptance of entropy, reconstitution of other bodies in transformation and biological transfiguration. During my visit to the Necropolis in August 2021 I learned that these spiritual sites were actually buried by the Etruscan living societies so that the dead could continue to conduct their activities in the underground. It is thus anachronistic that now the sepulchres are accessible to humans, but in a way it also testimonies the continuation of life into new arrangements of cultures, the transformation of social values and even the transfiguration of older civilizations into new ones. To think that some sites still stand buried under soccer fields and Italian highways. This passage is what the entrance of the Tumulo communicated to me. The anthropological metabolism of death, the opening to otherness, the acceptance of the inevitability of transfiguration, the threshold of time. In July 2021 I decided to take down "The Disguise", a sculpture of a weak grandma wearing a wolf mask, and transformed her into a new sculpture, a display of her former limbs and personal effects. The meticulous action of rearranging her body into a displayed catalogue lead me once again to reconsider entropy, this time expressed as a subject dis-identification via the dispersion of personal belonging. What will happen to my former hair as I step out of the hair salon? What shall I do with all my grandma’s stuff after she dies? What will it be of my own shoes in a 1000 years and what is it of Dante Alighieri’s lungs today? Furthermore, if I consider the river Tiber a body, the fields that sprout around it and the mountains that gaze upon it; what has it been of them and what will it be from them? When I ponder upon this constant mashing of particles, as if the particles themselves had freewill, I am triggered to simulate their mashing, replicate their transformation, venerate their mating, birthing and dying. And in doing so I re-discover something unspeakable of them and of myself as well: the feeling of a spirit blowing our common bodies.
De-Structured Grandma, 2021, 180 x 155 x 10 cm, pinewood, burnt pinewood, beeswax, metal wire, screws, broken lighter, fake pearl necklace, polyester dress, woollen shawl, woollen sweater, black cotton blanket.
Entrance to a Tumulo in Cerveteri, 2021, 109.5 x 138.5 cm, Caput Mortum, linseed oil, prepared linen canvas
De-Structured Grandma, 2021, 180 x 155 x 10 cm, pinewood, burnt pinewood, beeswax, metal wire, screws, broken lighter, fake pearl necklace, polyester dress, woollen shawl, woollen sweater, black cotton blanket.
Sometimes links of affection can change the way I see objects as personal belongings I inherited or acquired from other people. I experience it as a very time specific, bound to intimate relations -and therefore immensely fragile, phenomenon of transformation. In winter 2020 I was showering in the apartment where I used to live with my former partner who had left from spring. When I finished my shower and moved aside the curtain, his flip flops revealed to me laying on the carpet my mother brought me from Greece. But it was not Greece that I was reading on the carpet: the shape of the flip flop suggested me to read the word GRACE, perhaps as an epiphany of that intimate moment.
Grace, 2020, 57x 60 x 52 cm, cotton carpet from Greece, rubber flip flops, blue thread
Transformed gift (Faggy?), 2021, 45 x 100 x 20 cm, cotton, acrylic fabric, spray paint, metal ring
Transformed gift (AMICI), 2021, 43 x 65 cm, cotton, acrylic fabric
The series Transformed Gifts are repurposed memorabillia that have been given a new shape and existence. The series of work follow a common thread that began in winter 2020 while I was rediscovering my domestic environment. Drifting in a confining atmosphere with a decreasingly structuralised perception of time, my belongings started dissolving around me.
Purgatory, 2021, 132 x 164 cm, oil on prepared cotton canvas
Moving towards phenomena, events, situations, and experiences of great magnitude makes me think of Ulysses sailing towards the mountain of purgatory, narrated by Dante in the XXVI chant of the Divine Comedy. I made the Purgatory painting on a night in May where I felt particularly challenged by the magnitude of occurrences towards me. Purgatory is a semi-human and semi-divine structure made so that existence can be comprehended in both its material and spiritual sides. The purgatory is not a prison, but a process of transition. <<Cinque volte racceso e tante casso lo lume era di sotto da la luna, poi che 'ntrati eravam ne l'alto passo, quando n'apparve una montagna, bruna per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto; ché de la nova terra un turbo nacque e percosse del legno il primo canto. Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l'acque; a la quarta levar la poppa in suso e la prora ire in giù, com'altrui piacque, infin che 'l mar fu sovra noi richiuso>>
Lobster Vision (crop Rectangle), 2020, 122 x 94 x 9 cm Mdf board, oil paint
Lobster Vision (Big Rectangle), 2020, 122 x 91 x 9 cm, Mdf board, oil paint
Lobster Vision (small Rectangle), 2020, 73 x 56.5 x 9 cm, Mdf board, oil paint
After reading about the miraculous biological technology of the lobster eye I was triggered to think about vision in different perceptual registers. The lobster eye works by reflection instead of refraction, therefore instead of spreading light in a wide angle it bounces back the light coming from exactly one point very very far away in space. That is useful in dark environments like the bottom of the sea. Scientists also build a gigantic lobster eye-like machine to look far into space. New technologies of seeing and seeing as understanding open the question not only into the physical existence of sight, but also about vision in the metaphysical dimension. I also wanted to do something about the lobster vision, and approached painting. I try to mix the 3 primary colours to get to black, without having any black reference around me. So only unit of measure is my eye and the color I put on the plate seconds before.
Technology of writing: SPLENDOR, 2018, 150 x 100 x 20 cm, Black board, chalk, yellow mop, 8 polaroid photos, water
While I was working at the technology of writing: SPLENDOR I was comparing words and how the mind creates abstract images of them. I was specifically fascinated by trying to imagine, to create an image for the Latin word SPLENDOR. The word refers to brilliance, magnificence, lustre and grandeur, yet is inseparable from the physical element of provenance that is the image of light. There is a poem Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote in the trenches of world war 1, titled Mattina (morning). The poem is immediate, short, hermetic: it condenses all that there is for the senses in the coming of the sun, and for the poetry in waiting the manifestation of new dawn. M'illumino d'immenso. A blackboard is wiped with a wet mop and photographed with a Polaroid camera while its drying. Once completely dry, the word 'splendor' is written on the blackboard in capital letters with a chalk, then the process is repeated cyclically. The Polaroids are presented on the blackboard throughout the process, and the time lapse between fully wet and snapshot is reported on them.
Technology of writing: SPLENDOR, 2018, 150 x 100 x 20 cm, Black board, chalk, yellow mop, 8 polaroid photos, water
List of actions that deal with states of matter, 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
In winter 2020 I made the list of actions that deal with states of matter to express a comparison between English verbs and atmospheric introspections, between bodies of waters and emotions, found in expressions such as “head in the clouds”, “storm of thoughts”, “drowning in debt” or even “anchoring in someone”. In the process, I collected an imaginary ontology of physic and atmospheric phenomena used to express and visualize introspections. The written text follows the physic rhythm of matter: it starts with the airy state at the top (flying), falling towards the liquid (drifting) and ending at the bottom with the solid state (anchoring). There is balance and clarity in listing the verbs from the lightest to the heaviest one, giving a sense of vertigo that fills the space of the paper with the logic of a list. Only later, in summer 2021, I began studying Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists (2009), where I found inspiring new facets and interpretations for the work.
List of actions that deal with states of matter(blue edges), 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
Take a breath, 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
Boys by the pool, Out of the water (Colour) and self portrait, 2021, 43 x 29.8 cm, gouauche on paper
In the period of winter 2020, with the disappearance of beginning and end in my life due to the corona crisis, I was drawn to elaborate on the absurd lack of continuity that had flooded my surroundings. Bodies of water are often used to comprehend human circumstances. I consulted Zygmunt Baumann Liquid Modernity, Astrida Neimanis Hydrofeminism, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the myth of Narcissus to elaborate a series of lyric introspections on subject and water. The pool is this artificial mass of water, more or less big, made to fit humans inside. The boys are presences, floating subjects and objects to a voyeur’s gaze.
Blue Pigment (The particles surrounding us), 2021, 27.8 x 24 cm, ultramarine blue pigment, water, ink, paper, salt
Blue Pigment (Liquid time light life), 2021, 27.8 x 24 cm ultramarine blue pigment, water, ink, paper, salt
To empathize with my melting surrounding I watched and collected videos where boys are hanging out in a pool: diving, splashing, immerging, emerging, floating and taking breath. I used drawing to reproduce selected scenes from the videos; focusing between the subjects, the scene and the waters, liquid surrounding. By using different mediums, techniques, sizes and repeating/alternating images throughout the series, I articulated a visual and lyrical vocabulary of boys and pools to ultimately reach my own feeling of drifting in a borderless pool, and to externalize this diving deeper in an instance where space and time are dissolved into the liquid state.
B&W print (A drowning dame reflecting), 2019, 29.8 x 21 cm photographic print (original: oil crayons, laser print, marker)
Ophelia’s death in the Hamlet and its pre-Raphaelite depictions, as well as romantic landscape painting as introspection, bathing rituals and Giacomo Leopardi’s poem L’Infinito were aligning in my mind when I first saw the image of a young man emerging from a pool and taking his first breath.
A Drowning Dame Reflecting, 2020, 112 x 140 cm, cotton curtain, ink
I re-discovered in my archive a sketch I made in 2019 on an a4 print inspired by sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, and decided to further elaborate the figure of the dame, a drowning boy. The dame reflecting (leaning on bed) was the following step. I then worked with a photograph of a friend I took in 2017. I was thinking of the modernist literary technique of stream of consciousness from Joyce and Woolf and wanted to find a way to better blend the central subject and the surrounding, as if both were merging into one introspective state. The final work was developed from my original sketch, then worked with a soaked cotton curtain, salty water for absorption, rice for holding the water in place and ink for the contrast. Throughout the pictorial process I often changed surfaces and directions on which the fabric was hanging in order to control as much the spreading of the water. With the special technique developed intuitively, the movement of water and ink through the fabric created bubbling patterns that blur the image in an ethereal watery abstraction, echoing the breathing subject from the original sketch where the figure seems to be respiring just before or right after diving in water.
A Dame Reflecting, 2020, 95,5 x 75,5 cm, paper, permanent markers, purple tape
Colour print (A body is a gateway), 2021, 29.8 x 21 cm photographic print (original: laser print, permanent marker, pencil)
Boys by the Pool series possesses a bucolic impression. The boys play around, swimming, dashing, floating, splashing. Despite their playfulness, their young male bodies become vulnerable to the most banal and conditioning element: water. Their limbs unfold in flamboyant gestures that aim to stay afloat whilst becoming an object of desire to the spectator/voyeur. Young Apollos that bathe in the dangers of water. Words abound in my work. Words are social sculptures in process, and writing is a gesture of petrifying meaning. As watery utterances, words float around in poetic efforts to anchor a liquid state of being.
Water tryptic (all that you met), 2021, 52.5 x 28 cm ultramarine blue pigment, water, salt
NAU, 2020, 110 x 60 cm, neptune balls, metal rings, blue thread
When I was a child, grandma was reciting to me L'infinito (The infinite) by Giacomo Leopardi. For I am from a different academic generation, I never got to memorize the whole poem, but by fascination got struck by the last verse: "e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare". (And drifting is to me sweet in this sea" -Naufragare I would here translate as drifting, falling through). I was very amused to stretch a relation between the etymology of the verb naufragare (nau/frago) and the phonemic transcription of english noun "Now" (nau). Drifting and present, or litterally ship (nav) and present, are now together.
I paid attention to the laurel plant for the first time when I saw the portrait of Dante Alighieri by Botticelli. I immediately connected the tradition of poetry with that of the laureates, and the ritual of crowning with bay leaf. Diving deeper in research, I came to know that bay leaf was consumed in the ancient temple of Apollo in Delphi to consult the oracle. Laurel is indeed slightly narcotic and has the effect of lowering blood pressure. Furthermore I recalled the myth of Apollo and Daphne, nymph that was substituted with a laurel plant to escape the god's clutches. In ancient Rome, laurel was believed to contain a fire demon inside, as it would crackle and writhe when burned. That is why the emperor Tiberio, as described by Plinius the Elder, would wear a laurel crown during thunderstorms. This wide research on the plant and its relation to myth, poetry and power, led me to imagine the symbolic technique of cutting out letters from its leaves, thus creating sentences and talking branches.
Laurel Branch (running together from cave to cave), 2020, 30 x 70 x 15 cm, laurel branch, linseed oil, hardwood
Aurora incipit aurora, 2021, 150 x 108 cm, Oil crayons, ink, paper / Aurum Orior, 2021, 150 x 113 cm, Oil crayons, ink, paper
The works around the harvest bear the notion of regeneration within ever-changing social and emotional landscapes. The harvest, as well as the sunset and the sunrise, are cycles of abundance and scarcity that happen anew in constant repetition. Aurora is Latin word for morning and by dividing it into Aurum (gold) and Orior (to rise), I realized the connection between morning, sun rising, gold rising and celebration of cycles. I fantasise about ancient Roman Sicilian granaries, the so called Granaries of the Empire, and the labour and rituals connected to accumulating richness from the products of the land. Cycles that echoes the dancing of the earth and sun and culminate in the season of summer, where gold is also sprouting in the fields.
"By reading Empire (2000) by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt I rediscovered the notions of universal peace and right as the two foundations for a global, all-encompassing supranational organization that brings together all humans. I began to question the fight for peace and right as a mechanism for assertion of power. I am diffident of power and I am diffident of empire; I want to look for human escapes from its order. Fabrizio de Andre sings in ‘Nella mia ora di liberta’ (In my freedom hour) that sometimes violence is more human than law. It seems to confute Kant < the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me>>, but it actually proposes that failing the moral law must also be accepted as part of being human. This is the case of the wolf. I fantasize about encounters between undefended humans and wolves. I wonder how I would imagine a wolf after an encounter in the dangers of the night, as if little red riding hood was asked to make some drawings. Fear is part of life; found outside the borders of empire."
U big black wolf, 2021, 180 x 210 x 15 cm, cotton fabric
The beast ascends as the spirit of fear, 2021, four pillars, 60 x 50 x 150 cm, tuff stone bricks, tuff stone dust, pyrite cubes, cardboard, paper, nails
The beast ascends as the spirit of fear, 2021, four pillars, 60 x 50 x 150 cm, tuff stone bricks, tuff stone dust, pyrite cubes, cardboard, paper, nails
I look at the wolf, 2021, 70 x 50 cm, gouache on paper
Wolf Mask, 2021, 70 x 60 cm, paper
Four Pyramids of tears, 2021, 110 x 146 cm, acrylic and oil on Mikado cotton canvas prepared with transparent primer and cuttlefish bones dust
Pyramid of tears and crying wolf, 2021, 115 x 146 cm, oil on Mikado cotton canvas prepared with transparent primer and cuttlefish bones dust
The magic of pyramids lies in the physical challenge of conquering gravity, to escape the ever-calling mass of earth -our material reality, in an attempt to ascend and reach the empyrean realm, a metaphysic plane. To some extents, gravity is hell and pyramids are the empowering proof of that. 
Tears, on the other hand, always go down -that is in environment close to earth; or more precisely always move towards the core of big masses of material. Tears move opposite to pyramids.
Imperial Sheepdog, 2021, 108 x 35 x 248 cm, acrylic paint, mdf, pine, hardwood, wooden broomstick, twine, screws
In relation to safety, freedom and danger, I also have a fascination for the figure of the sheepdog. The sheepdog is a canine, a descendant of the wolf, yet it is trained to act in defence of the sheep and against its kind. Often these guardian animals are forced to wear spike collars or other types of weapon like prostheses to enhance their advantage in a possible fight against the danger of an enemy. This phenomena extends to hunt dogs as well, not to defend a flock, but to attack and bring down the enemy.
The clutches of time 1 and 3, 2020, 21 x 15 cm, Folded newspaper paper, coloured pencils, paper clips
In certain nights where I feel particularly inclined to do so, when there is absence of natural light and I have control over artificial light, I stage self-portraiture. It is important for me to remember that nights are the shadow cast by the mass of our planet earth shielding the light from our star the sun. 
Self-portraiture is a stage and a ritual, where one focuses with their reflection in their reflection. I see my reflection through the see-through window at daylight that transforms into an inward mirror at night-time.
Humidity mural (or BILL2.0), 2019, 200 x 80 cm, Humidity on wall
Humidity extraction device, 2019, 25 x 30 x 15 cm, Plastic pain trays, 3 silica gel dehumidifying bags
This process based installation is a discovery I did in 2019. When putting Humidity absorbent silica gel bags inside paint trays, it is possible to see throughout the arch of a week the level of water rising in the container. I find the water rising quite scary and beautiful. I used this self-extracted water to paint the tracksuit of Bill on the wall. It created an indelible humidity stain in the wall, which was more visible in rainy days and less visible in dry ones, changing intensity with the weather.
Entrance to a Tumulo in Cerveteri, 2021, 109.5 x 138.5 cm, Caput Mortum, linseed oil, prepared linen canvas
 I was too young to remember the first time I visited the Etruscan Necropoli della Banditaccia near Cerveteri, IT, but the images from the books I found in my grandmother's library in October 2020 immediately caught my attention. I was particularly drawn by the photo of a Tumulo -a specifically shaped structure that presented an entrance leading underground to the sepulchre. The vegetation that had grown around and on top of the tomb gave me a hint for life continuation, as if the disintegration of a body meant acceptance of entropy, reconstitution of other bodies in transformation and biological transfiguration. During my visit to the Necropolis in August 2021 I learned that these spiritual sites were actually buried by the Etruscan living societies so that the dead could continue to conduct their activities in the underground. It is thus anachronistic that now the sepulchres are accessible to humans, but in a way it also testimonies the continuation of life into new arrangements of cultures, the transformation of social values and even the transfiguration of older civilizations into new ones. To think that some sites still stand buried under soccer fields and Italian highways. This passage is what the entrance of the Tumulo communicated to me. The anthropological metabolism of death, the opening to otherness, the acceptance of the inevitability of transfiguration, the threshold of time.
De-Structured Grandma, 2021, 180 x 155 x 10 cm, pinewood, burnt pinewood, beeswax, metal wire, screws, broken lighter, fake pearl necklace, polyester dress, woollen shawl, woollen sweater, black cotton blanket.
De-Structured Grandma, 2021, 180 x 155 x 10 cm, pinewood, burnt pinewood, beeswax, metal wire, screws, broken lighter, fake pearl necklace, polyester dress, woollen shawl, woollen sweater, black cotton blanket.
In July 2021 I decided to take down "The Disguise", a sculpture of a weak grandma wearing a wolf mask, and transformed her into a new sculpture, a display of her former limbs and personal effects. The meticulous action of rearranging her body into a displayed catalogue lead me once again to reconsider entropy, this time expressed as a subject dis-identification via the dispersion of personal belonging. What will happen to my former hair as I step out of the hair salon? What shall I do with all my grandma’s stuff after she dies? What will it be of my own shoes in a 1000 years and what is it of Dante Alighieri’s lungs today? Furthermore, if I consider the river Tiber a body, the fields that sprout around it and the mountains that gaze upon it; what has it been of them and what will it be from them? When I ponder upon this constant mashing of particles, as if the particles themselves had freewill, I am triggered to simulate their mashing, replicate their transformation, venerate their mating, birthing and dying. And in doing so I re-discover something unspeakable of them and of myself as well: the feeling of a spirit blowing our common bodies.
Grace, 2020, 57x 60 x 52 cm, cotton carpet from Greece, rubber flip flops, blue thread
Sometimes links of affection can change the way I see objects as personal belongings I inherited or acquired from other people. I experience it as a very time specific, bound to intimate relations -and therefore immensely fragile, phenomenon of transformation. In winter 2020 I was showering in the apartment where I used to live with my former partner who had left from spring. When I finished my shower and moved aside the curtain, his flip flops revealed to me laying on the carpet my mother brought me from Greece. But it was not Greece that I was reading on the carpet: the shape of the flip flop suggested me to read the word GRACE, perhaps as an epiphany of that intimate moment.
Transformed gift (Faggy?), 2021, 45 x 100 x 20 cm, cotton, acrylic fabric, spray paint, metal ring
Transformed gift (AMICI), 2021, 43 x 65 cm, cotton, acrylic fabric
The series Transformed Gifts are repurposed memorabillia that have been given a new shape and existence. The series of work follow a common thread that began in winter 2020 while I was rediscovering my domestic environment. Drifting in a confining atmosphere with a decreasingly structuralised perception of time, my belongings started dissolving around me.
Purgatory, 2021, 132 x 164 cm, oil on prepared cotton canvas
Moving towards phenomena, events, situations, and experiences of great magnitude makes me think of Ulysses sailing towards the mountain of purgatory, narrated by Dante in the XXVI chant of the Divine Comedy. I made the Purgatory painting on a night in May where I felt particularly challenged by the magnitude of occurrences towards me. Purgatory is a semi-human and semi-divine structure made so that existence can be comprehended in both its material and spiritual sides. The purgatory is not a prison, but a process of transition. <<Cinque volte racceso e tante casso lo lume era di sotto da la luna, poi che 'ntrati eravam ne l'alto passo, quando n'apparve una montagna, bruna per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto; ché de la nova terra un turbo nacque e percosse del legno il primo canto. Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l'acque; a la quarta levar la poppa in suso e la prora ire in giù, com'altrui piacque, infin che 'l mar fu sovra noi richiuso>>
Lobster Vision (crop Rectangle), 2020, 122 x 94 x 9 cm Mdf board, oil paint
Lobster Vision (Big Rectangle), 2020, 122 x 91 x 9 cm, Mdf board, oil paint
Lobster Vision (small Rectangle), 2020, 73 x 56.5 x 9 cm, Mdf board, oil paint
After reading about the miraculous biological technology of the lobster eye I was triggered to think about vision in different perceptual registers. The lobster eye works by reflection instead of refraction, therefore instead of spreading light in a wide angle it bounces back the light coming from exactly one point very very far away in space. That is useful in dark environments like the bottom of the sea. Scientists also build a gigantic lobster eye-like machine to look far into space. New technologies of seeing and seeing as understanding open the question not only into the physical existence of sight, but also about vision in the metaphysical dimension. I also wanted to do something about the lobster vision, and approached painting. I try to mix the 3 primary colours to get to black, without having any black reference around me. So only unit of measure is my eye and the color I put on the plate seconds before.
Technology of writing: SPLENDOR, 2018, 150 x 100 x 20 cm, Black board, chalk, yellow mop, 8 polaroid photos, water
Technology of writing: SPLENDOR, 2018, 150 x 100 x 20 cm, Black board, chalk, yellow mop, 8 polaroid photos, water
While I was working at the technology of writing: SPLENDOR I was comparing words and how the mind creates abstract images of them. I was specifically fascinated by trying to imagine, to create an image for the Latin word SPLENDOR. The word refers to brilliance, magnificence, lustre and grandeur, yet is inseparable from the physical element of provenance that is the image of light. There is a poem Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote in the trenches of world war 1, titled Mattina (morning). The poem is immediate, short, hermetic: it condenses all that there is for the senses in the coming of the sun, and for the poetry in waiting the manifestation of new dawn. M'illumino d'immenso. A blackboard is wiped with a wet mop and photographed with a Polaroid camera while its drying. Once completely dry, the word 'splendor' is written on the blackboard in capital letters with a chalk, then the process is repeated cyclically. The Polaroids are presented on the blackboard throughout the process, and the time lapse between fully wet and snapshot is reported on them.
List of actions that deal with states of matter, 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
List of actions that deal with states of matter(blue edges), 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
Take a breath, 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
In winter 2020 I made the list of actions that deal with states of matter to express a comparison between English verbs and atmospheric introspections, between bodies of waters and emotions, found in expressions such as “head in the clouds”, “storm of thoughts”, “drowning in debt” or even “anchoring in someone”. In the process, I collected an imaginary ontology of physic and atmospheric phenomena used to express and visualize introspections. The written text follows the physic rhythm of matter: it starts with the airy state at the top (flying), falling towards the liquid (drifting) and ending at the bottom with the solid state (anchoring). There is balance and clarity in listing the verbs from the lightest to the heaviest one, giving a sense of vertigo that fills the space of the paper with the logic of a list. Only later, in summer 2021, I began studying Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists (2009), where I found inspiring new facets and interpretations for the work.
Boys by the pool, Out of the water (Colour) and self portrait, 2021, 43 x 29.8 cm, gouauche on paper
In the period of winter 2020, with the disappearance of beginning and end in my life due to the corona crisis, I was drawn to elaborate on the absurd lack of continuity that had flooded my surroundings. Bodies of water are often used to comprehend human circumstances. I consulted Zygmunt Baumann Liquid Modernity, Astrida Neimanis Hydrofeminism, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the myth of Narcissus to elaborate a series of lyric introspections on subject and water. The pool is this artificial mass of water, more or less big, made to fit humans inside. The boys are presences, floating subjects and objects to a voyeur’s gaze.
Blue Pigment (The particles surrounding us), 2021, 27.8 x 24 cm, ultramarine blue pigment, water, ink, paper, salt
Blue Pigment (Liquid time light life), 2021, 27.8 x 24 cm ultramarine blue pigment, water, ink, paper, salt
To empathize with my melting surrounding I watched and collected videos where boys are hanging out in a pool: diving, splashing, immerging, emerging, floating and taking breath. I used drawing to reproduce selected scenes from the videos; focusing between the subjects, the scene and the waters, liquid surrounding. By using different mediums, techniques, sizes and repeating/alternating images throughout the series, I articulated a visual and lyrical vocabulary of boys and pools to ultimately reach my own feeling of drifting in a borderless pool, and to externalize this diving deeper in an instance where space and time are dissolved into the liquid state.
B&W print (A drowning dame reflecting), 2019, 29.8 x 21 cm photographic print (original: oil crayons, laser print, marker)
A Drowning Dame Reflecting, 2020, 112 x 140 cm, cotton curtain, ink
Ophelia’s death in the Hamlet and its pre-Raphaelite depictions, as well as romantic landscape painting as introspection, bathing rituals and Giacomo Leopardi’s poem L’Infinito were aligning in my mind when I first saw the image of a young man emerging from a pool and taking his first breath. I re-discovered in my archive a sketch I made in 2019 on an a4 print inspired by sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, and decided to further elaborate the figure of the dame, a drowning boy. The dame reflecting (leaning on bed) was the following step. I then worked with a photograph of a friend I took in 2017. I was thinking of the modernist literary technique of stream of consciousness from Joyce and Woolf and wanted to find a way to better blend the central subject and the surrounding, as if both were merging into one introspective state. The final work was developed from my original sketch, then worked with a soaked cotton curtain, salty water for absorption, rice for holding the water in place and ink for the contrast. Throughout the pictorial process I often changed surfaces and directions on which the fabric was hanging in order to control as much the spreading of the water. With the special technique developed intuitively, the movement of water and ink through the fabric created bubbling patterns that blur the image in an ethereal watery abstraction, echoing the breathing subject from the original sketch where the figure seems to be respiring just before or right after diving in water.
A Dame Reflecting, 2020, 95,5 x 75,5 cm, paper, permanent markers, purple tape
Colour print (A body is a gateway), 2021, 29.8 x 21 cm photographic print (original: laser print, permanent marker, pencil)
Boys by the Pool series possesses a bucolic impression. The boys play around, swimming, dashing, floating, splashing. Despite their playfulness, their young male bodies become vulnerable to the most banal and conditioning element: water. Their limbs unfold in flamboyant gestures that aim to stay afloat whilst becoming an object of desire to the spectator/voyeur. Young Apollos that bathe in the dangers of water.
Water tryptic (all that you met), 2021, 52.5 x 28 cm ultramarine blue pigment, water, salt
Words abound in my work. Words are social sculptures in process, and writing is a gesture of petrifying meaning. As watery utterances, words float around in poetic efforts to anchor a liquid state of being.
NAU, 2020, 110 x 60 cm, neptune balls, metal rings, blue thread
When I was a child, grandma was reciting to me L'infinito (The infinite) by Giacomo Leopardi. For I am from a different academic generation, I never got to memorize the whole poem, but by fascination got struck by the last verse: "e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare". (And drifting is to me sweet in this sea" -Naufragare I would here translate as drifting, falling through). I was very amused to stretch a relation between the etymology of the verb naufragare (nau/frago) and the phonemic transcription of english noun "Now" (nau). Drifting and present, or litterally ship (nav) and present, are now together.
Laurel Branch (running together from cave to cave), 2020, 30 x 70 x 15 cm, laurel branch, linseed oil, hardwood
I paid attention to the laurel plant for the first time when I saw the portrait of Dante Alighieri by Botticelli. I immediately connected the tradition of poetry with that of the laureates, and the ritual of crowning with bay leaf. Diving deeper in research, I came to know that bay leaf was consumed in the ancient temple of Apollo in Delphi to consult the oracle. Laurel is indeed slightly narcotic and has the effect of lowering blood pressure. Furthermore I recalled the myth of Apollo and Daphne, nymph that was substituted with a laurel plant to escape the god's clutches. In ancient Rome, laurel was believed to contain a fire demon inside, as it would crackle and writhe when burned. That is why the emperor Tiberio, as described by Plinius the Elder, would wear a laurel crown during thunderstorms. This wide research on the plant and its relation to myth, poetry and power, led me to imagine the symbolic technique of cutting out letters from its leaves, thus creating sentences and talking branches.
Aurora incipit aurora, 2021, 150 x 108 cm, Oil crayons, ink, paper / Aurum Orior, 2021, 150 x 113 cm, Oil crayons, ink, paper
The works around the harvest bear the notion of regeneration within ever-changing social and emotional landscapes. The harvest, as well as the sunset and the sunrise, are cycles of abundance and scarcity that happen anew in constant repetition. Aurora is Latin word for morning and by dividing it into Aurum (gold) and Orior (to rise), I realized the connection between morning, sun rising, gold rising and celebration of cycles. I fantasise about ancient Roman Sicilian granaries, the so called Granaries of the Empire, and the labour and rituals connected to accumulating richness from the products of the land. Cycles that echoes the dancing of the earth and sun and culminate in the season of summer, where gold is also sprouting in the fields.
U big black wolf, 2021, 180 x 210 x 15 cm, cotton fabric
"By reading Empire (2000) by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt I rediscovered the notions of universal peace and right as the two foundations for a global, all-encompassing supranational organization that brings together all humans. I began to question the fight for peace and right as a mechanism for assertion of power. I am diffident of power and I am diffident of empire; I want to look for human escapes from its order. Fabrizio de Andre sings in ‘Nella mia ora di liberta’ (In my freedom hour) that sometimes violence is more human than law. It seems to confute Kant < the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me>>, but it actually proposes that failing the moral law must also be accepted as part of being human. This is the case of the wolf. I fantasize about encounters between undefended humans and wolves. I wonder how I would imagine a wolf after an encounter in the dangers of the night, as if little red riding hood was asked to make some drawings. Fear is part of life; found outside the borders of empire."
The beast ascends as the spirit of fear, 2021, four pillars, 60 x 50 x 150 cm, tuff stone bricks, tuff stone dust, pyrite cubes, cardboard, paper, nails
The beast ascends as the spirit of fear, 2021, four pillars, 60 x 50 x 150 cm, tuff stone bricks, tuff stone dust, pyrite cubes, cardboard, paper, nails
I look at the wolf, 2021, 70 x 50 cm, gouache on paper
Wolf Mask, 2021, 70 x 60 cm, paper
Four Pyramids of tears, 2021, 110 x 146 cm, acrylic and oil on Mikado cotton canvas prepared with transparent primer and cuttlefish bones dust
Pyramid of tears and crying wolf, 2021, 115 x 146 cm, oil on Mikado cotton canvas prepared with transparent primer and cuttlefish bones dust
The magic of pyramids lies in the physical challenge of conquering gravity, to escape the ever-calling mass of earth -our material reality, in an attempt to ascend and reach the empyrean realm, a metaphysic plane. To some extents, gravity is hell and pyramids are the empowering proof of that. 
Tears, on the other hand, always go down -that is in environment close to earth; or more precisely always move towards the core of big masses of material. Tears move opposite to pyramids.
Imperial Sheepdog, 2021, 108 x 35 x 248 cm, acrylic paint, mdf, pine, hardwood, wooden broomstick, twine, screws
In relation to safety, freedom and danger, I also have a fascination for the figure of the sheepdog. The sheepdog is a canine, a descendant of the wolf, yet it is trained to act in defence of the sheep and against its kind. Often these guardian animals are forced to wear spike collars or other types of weapon like prostheses to enhance their advantage in a possible fight against the danger of an enemy. This phenomena extends to hunt dogs as well, not to defend a flock, but to attack and bring down the enemy.
The clutches of time 1 and 3, 2020, 21 x 15 cm, Folded newspaper paper, coloured pencils, paper clips
In certain nights where I feel particularly inclined to do so, when there is absence of natural light and I have control over artificial light, I stage self-portraiture. It is important for me to remember that nights are the shadow cast by the mass of our planet earth shielding the light from our star the sun. 
Self-portraiture is a stage and a ritual, where one focuses with their reflection in their reflection. I see my reflection through the see-through window at daylight that transforms into an inward mirror at night-time.
Humidity mural (or BILL2.0), 2019, 200 x 80 cm, Humidity on wall
Humidity extraction device, 2019, 25 x 30 x 15 cm, Plastic pain trays, 3 silica gel dehumidifying bags
This process based installation is a discovery I did in 2019. When putting Humidity absorbent silica gel bags inside paint trays, it is possible to see throughout the arch of a week the level of water rising in the container. I find the water rising quite scary and beautiful. I used this self-extracted water to paint the tracksuit of Bill on the wall. It created an indelible humidity stain in the wall, which was more visible in rainy days and less visible in dry ones, changing intensity with the weather.
Entrance to a Tumulo in Cerveteri, 2021, 109.5 x 138.5 cm, Caput Mortum, linseed oil, prepared linen canvas
 I was too young to remember the first time I visited the Etruscan Necropoli della Banditaccia near Cerveteri, IT, but the images from the books I found in my grandmother's library in October 2020 immediately caught my attention. I was particularly drawn by the photo of a Tumulo -a specifically shaped structure that presented an entrance leading underground to the sepulchre. The vegetation that had grown around and on top of the tomb gave me a hint for life continuation, as if the disintegration of a body meant acceptance of entropy, reconstitution of other bodies in transformation and biological transfiguration. During my visit to the Necropolis in August 2021 I learned that these spiritual sites were actually buried by the Etruscan living societies so that the dead could continue to conduct their activities in the underground. It is thus anachronistic that now the sepulchres are accessible to humans, but in a way it also testimonies the continuation of life into new arrangements of cultures, the transformation of social values and even the transfiguration of older civilizations into new ones. To think that some sites still stand buried under soccer fields and Italian highways. This passage is what the entrance of the Tumulo communicated to me. The anthropological metabolism of death, the opening to otherness, the acceptance of the inevitability of transfiguration, the threshold of time.
De-Structured Grandma, 2021, 180 x 155 x 10 cm, pinewood, burnt pinewood, beeswax, metal wire, screws, broken lighter, fake pearl necklace, polyester dress, woollen shawl, woollen sweater, black cotton blanket.
De-Structured Grandma, 2021, 180 x 155 x 10 cm, pinewood, burnt pinewood, beeswax, metal wire, screws, broken lighter, fake pearl necklace, polyester dress, woollen shawl, woollen sweater, black cotton blanket.
In July 2021 I decided to take down "The Disguise", a sculpture of a weak grandma wearing a wolf mask, and transformed her into a new sculpture, a display of her former limbs and personal effects. The meticulous action of rearranging her body into a displayed catalogue lead me once again to reconsider entropy, this time expressed as a subject dis-identification via the dispersion of personal belonging. What will happen to my former hair as I step out of the hair salon? What shall I do with all my grandma’s stuff after she dies? What will it be of my own shoes in a 1000 years and what is it of Dante Alighieri’s lungs today? Furthermore, if I consider the river Tiber a body, the fields that sprout around it and the mountains that gaze upon it; what has it been of them and what will it be from them? When I ponder upon this constant mashing of particles, as if the particles themselves had freewill, I am triggered to simulate their mashing, replicate their transformation, venerate their mating, birthing and dying. And in doing so I re-discover something unspeakable of them and of myself as well: the feeling of a spirit blowing our common bodies.
Grace, 2020, 57x 60 x 52 cm, cotton carpet from Greece, rubber flip flops, blue thread
Sometimes links of affection can change the way I see objects as personal belongings I inherited or acquired from other people. I experience it as a very time specific, bound to intimate relations -and therefore immensely fragile, phenomenon of transformation. In winter 2020 I was showering in the apartment where I used to live with my former partner who had left from spring. When I finished my shower and moved aside the curtain, his flip flops revealed to me laying on the carpet my mother brought me from Greece. But it was not Greece that I was reading on the carpet: the shape of the flip flop suggested me to read the word GRACE, perhaps as an epiphany of that intimate moment.
Transformed gift (Faggy?), 2021, 45 x 100 x 20 cm, cotton, acrylic fabric, spray paint, metal ring
Transformed gift (AMICI), 2021, 43 x 65 cm, cotton, acrylic fabric
The series Transformed Gifts are repurposed memorabillia that have been given a new shape and existence. The series of work follow a common thread that began in winter 2020 while I was rediscovering my domestic environment. Drifting in a confining atmosphere with a decreasingly structuralised perception of time, my belongings started dissolving around me.
Purgatory, 2021, 132 x 164 cm, oil on prepared cotton canvas
Moving towards phenomena, events, situations, and experiences of great magnitude makes me think of Ulysses sailing towards the mountain of purgatory, narrated by Dante in the XXVI chant of the Divine Comedy. I made the Purgatory painting on a night in May where I felt particularly challenged by the magnitude of occurrences towards me. Purgatory is a semi-human and semi-divine structure made so that existence can be comprehended in both its material and spiritual sides. The purgatory is not a prison, but a process of transition. <<Cinque volte racceso e tante casso lo lume era di sotto da la luna, poi che 'ntrati eravam ne l'alto passo, quando n'apparve una montagna, bruna per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto; ché de la nova terra un turbo nacque e percosse del legno il primo canto. Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l'acque; a la quarta levar la poppa in suso e la prora ire in giù, com'altrui piacque, infin che 'l mar fu sovra noi richiuso>>
Lobster Vision (crop Rectangle), 2020, 122 x 94 x 9 cm Mdf board, oil paint
Lobster Vision (Big Rectangle), 2020, 122 x 91 x 9 cm, Mdf board, oil paint
Lobster Vision (small Rectangle), 2020, 73 x 56.5 x 9 cm, Mdf board, oil paint
After reading about the miraculous biological technology of the lobster eye I was triggered to think about vision in different perceptual registers. The lobster eye works by reflection instead of refraction, therefore instead of spreading light in a wide angle it bounces back the light coming from exactly one point very very far away in space. That is useful in dark environments like the bottom of the sea. Scientists also build a gigantic lobster eye-like machine to look far into space. New technologies of seeing and seeing as understanding open the question not only into the physical existence of sight, but also about vision in the metaphysical dimension. I also wanted to do something about the lobster vision, and approached painting. I try to mix the 3 primary colours to get to black, without having any black reference around me. So only unit of measure is my eye and the color I put on the plate seconds before.
Technology of writing: SPLENDOR, 2018, 150 x 100 x 20 cm, Black board, chalk, yellow mop, 8 polaroid photos, water
Technology of writing: SPLENDOR, 2018, 150 x 100 x 20 cm, Black board, chalk, yellow mop, 8 polaroid photos, water
While I was working at the technology of writing: SPLENDOR I was comparing words and how the mind creates abstract images of them. I was specifically fascinated by trying to imagine, to create an image for the Latin word SPLENDOR. The word refers to brilliance, magnificence, lustre and grandeur, yet is inseparable from the physical element of provenance that is the image of light. There is a poem Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote in the trenches of world war 1, titled Mattina (morning). The poem is immediate, short, hermetic: it condenses all that there is for the senses in the coming of the sun, and for the poetry in waiting the manifestation of new dawn. M'illumino d'immenso. A blackboard is wiped with a wet mop and photographed with a Polaroid camera while its drying. Once completely dry, the word 'splendor' is written on the blackboard in capital letters with a chalk, then the process is repeated cyclically. The Polaroids are presented on the blackboard throughout the process, and the time lapse between fully wet and snapshot is reported on them.
List of actions that deal with states of matter, 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
List of actions that deal with states of matter(blue edges), 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
Take a breath, 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
In winter 2020 I made the list of actions that deal with states of matter to express a comparison between English verbs and atmospheric introspections, between bodies of waters and emotions, found in expressions such as “head in the clouds”, “storm of thoughts”, “drowning in debt” or even “anchoring in someone”. In the process, I collected an imaginary ontology of physic and atmospheric phenomena used to express and visualize introspections. The written text follows the physic rhythm of matter: it starts with the airy state at the top (flying), falling towards the liquid (drifting) and ending at the bottom with the solid state (anchoring). There is balance and clarity in listing the verbs from the lightest to the heaviest one, giving a sense of vertigo that fills the space of the paper with the logic of a list. Only later, in summer 2021, I began studying Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists (2009), where I found inspiring new facets and interpretations for the work.
Boys by the pool, Out of the water (Colour) and self portrait, 2021, 43 x 29.8 cm, gouauche on paper
In the period of winter 2020, with the disappearance of beginning and end in my life due to the corona crisis, I was drawn to elaborate on the absurd lack of continuity that had flooded my surroundings. Bodies of water are often used to comprehend human circumstances. I consulted Zygmunt Baumann Liquid Modernity, Astrida Neimanis Hydrofeminism, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the myth of Narcissus to elaborate a series of lyric introspections on subject and water. The pool is this artificial mass of water, more or less big, made to fit humans inside. The boys are presences, floating subjects and objects to a voyeur’s gaze.
Blue Pigment (The particles surrounding us), 2021, 27.8 x 24 cm, ultramarine blue pigment, water, ink, paper, salt
Blue Pigment (Liquid time light life), 2021, 27.8 x 24 cm ultramarine blue pigment, water, ink, paper, salt
To empathize with my melting surrounding I watched and collected videos where boys are hanging out in a pool: diving, splashing, immerging, emerging, floating and taking breath. I used drawing to reproduce selected scenes from the videos; focusing between the subjects, the scene and the waters, liquid surrounding. By using different mediums, techniques, sizes and repeating/alternating images throughout the series, I articulated a visual and lyrical vocabulary of boys and pools to ultimately reach my own feeling of drifting in a borderless pool, and to externalize this diving deeper in an instance where space and time are dissolved into the liquid state.
B&W print (A drowning dame reflecting), 2019, 29.8 x 21 cm photographic print (original: oil crayons, laser print, marker)
A Drowning Dame Reflecting, 2020, 112 x 140 cm, cotton curtain, ink
Ophelia’s death in the Hamlet and its pre-Raphaelite depictions, as well as romantic landscape painting as introspection, bathing rituals and Giacomo Leopardi’s poem L’Infinito were aligning in my mind when I first saw the image of a young man emerging from a pool and taking his first breath. I re-discovered in my archive a sketch I made in 2019 on an a4 print inspired by sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, and decided to further elaborate the figure of the dame, a drowning boy. The dame reflecting (leaning on bed) was the following step. I then worked with a photograph of a friend I took in 2017. I was thinking of the modernist literary technique of stream of consciousness from Joyce and Woolf and wanted to find a way to better blend the central subject and the surrounding, as if both were merging into one introspective state. The final work was developed from my original sketch, then worked with a soaked cotton curtain, salty water for absorption, rice for holding the water in place and ink for the contrast. Throughout the pictorial process I often changed surfaces and directions on which the fabric was hanging in order to control as much the spreading of the water. With the special technique developed intuitively, the movement of water and ink through the fabric created bubbling patterns that blur the image in an ethereal watery abstraction, echoing the breathing subject from the original sketch where the figure seems to be respiring just before or right after diving in water.
A Dame Reflecting, 2020, 95,5 x 75,5 cm, paper, permanent markers, purple tape
Colour print (A body is a gateway), 2021, 29.8 x 21 cm photographic print (original: laser print, permanent marker, pencil)
Boys by the Pool series possesses a bucolic impression. The boys play around, swimming, dashing, floating, splashing. Despite their playfulness, their young male bodies become vulnerable to the most banal and conditioning element: water. Their limbs unfold in flamboyant gestures that aim to stay afloat whilst becoming an object of desire to the spectator/voyeur. Young Apollos that bathe in the dangers of water.
Water tryptic (all that you met), 2021, 52.5 x 28 cm ultramarine blue pigment, water, salt
Words abound in my work. Words are social sculptures in process, and writing is a gesture of petrifying meaning. As watery utterances, words float around in poetic efforts to anchor a liquid state of being.
NAU, 2020, 110 x 60 cm, neptune balls, metal rings, blue thread
When I was a child, grandma was reciting to me L'infinito (The infinite) by Giacomo Leopardi. For I am from a different academic generation, I never got to memorize the whole poem, but by fascination got struck by the last verse: "e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare". (And drifting is to me sweet in this sea" -Naufragare I would here translate as drifting, falling through). I was very amused to stretch a relation between the etymology of the verb naufragare (nau/frago) and the phonemic transcription of english noun "Now" (nau). Drifting and present, or litterally ship (nav) and present, are now together.
Laurel Branch (running together from cave to cave), 2020, 30 x 70 x 15 cm, laurel branch, linseed oil, hardwood
I paid attention to the laurel plant for the first time when I saw the portrait of Dante Alighieri by Botticelli. I immediately connected the tradition of poetry with that of the laureates, and the ritual of crowning with bay leaf. Diving deeper in research, I came to know that bay leaf was consumed in the ancient temple of Apollo in Delphi to consult the oracle. Laurel is indeed slightly narcotic and has the effect of lowering blood pressure. Furthermore I recalled the myth of Apollo and Daphne, nymph that was substituted with a laurel plant to escape the god's clutches. In ancient Rome, laurel was believed to contain a fire demon inside, as it would crackle and writhe when burned. That is why the emperor Tiberio, as described by Plinius the Elder, would wear a laurel crown during thunderstorms. This wide research on the plant and its relation to myth, poetry and power, led me to imagine the symbolic technique of cutting out letters from its leaves, thus creating sentences and talking branches.
Aurora incipit aurora, 2021, 150 x 108 cm, Oil crayons, ink, paper / Aurum Orior, 2021, 150 x 113 cm, Oil crayons, ink, paper
The works around the harvest bear the notion of regeneration within ever-changing social and emotional landscapes. The harvest, as well as the sunset and the sunrise, are cycles of abundance and scarcity that happen anew in constant repetition. Aurora is Latin word for morning and by dividing it into Aurum (gold) and Orior (to rise), I realized the connection between morning, sun rising, gold rising and celebration of cycles. I fantasise about ancient Roman Sicilian granaries, the so called Granaries of the Empire, and the labour and rituals connected to accumulating richness from the products of the land. Cycles that echoes the dancing of the earth and sun and culminate in the season of summer, where gold is also sprouting in the fields.
U big black wolf, 2021, 180 x 210 x 15 cm, cotton fabric
"By reading Empire (2000) by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt I rediscovered the notions of universal peace and right as the two foundations for a global, all-encompassing supranational organization that brings together all humans. I began to question the fight for peace and right as a mechanism for assertion of power. I am diffident of power and I am diffident of empire; I want to look for human escapes from its order. Fabrizio de Andre sings in ‘Nella mia ora di liberta’ (In my freedom hour) that sometimes violence is more human than law. It seems to confute Kant < the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me>>, but it actually proposes that failing the moral law must also be accepted as part of being human. This is the case of the wolf. I fantasize about encounters between undefended humans and wolves. I wonder how I would imagine a wolf after an encounter in the dangers of the night, as if little red riding hood was asked to make some drawings. Fear is part of life; found outside the borders of empire."
The beast ascends as the spirit of fear, 2021, four pillars, 60 x 50 x 150 cm, tuff stone bricks, tuff stone dust, pyrite cubes, cardboard, paper, nails
The beast ascends as the spirit of fear, 2021, four pillars, 60 x 50 x 150 cm, tuff stone bricks, tuff stone dust, pyrite cubes, cardboard, paper, nails
I look at the wolf, 2021, 70 x 50 cm, gouache on paper
Wolf Mask, 2021, 70 x 60 cm, paper
Four Pyramids of tears, 2021, 110 x 146 cm, acrylic and oil on Mikado cotton canvas prepared with transparent primer and cuttlefish bones dust
Pyramid of tears and crying wolf, 2021, 115 x 146 cm, oil on Mikado cotton canvas prepared with transparent primer and cuttlefish bones dust
The magic of pyramids lies in the physical challenge of conquering gravity, to escape the ever-calling mass of earth -our material reality, in an attempt to ascend and reach the empyrean realm, a metaphysic plane. To some extents, gravity is hell and pyramids are the empowering proof of that. 
Tears, on the other hand, always go down -that is in environment close to earth; or more precisely always move towards the core of big masses of material. Tears move opposite to pyramids.
Imperial Sheepdog, 2021, 108 x 35 x 248 cm, acrylic paint, mdf, pine, hardwood, wooden broomstick, twine, screws
In relation to safety, freedom and danger, I also have a fascination for the figure of the sheepdog. The sheepdog is a canine, a descendant of the wolf, yet it is trained to act in defence of the sheep and against its kind. Often these guardian animals are forced to wear spike collars or other types of weapon like prostheses to enhance their advantage in a possible fight against the danger of an enemy. This phenomena extends to hunt dogs as well, not to defend a flock, but to attack and bring down the enemy.
The clutches of time 1 and 3, 2020, 21 x 15 cm, Folded newspaper paper, coloured pencils, paper clips
In certain nights where I feel particularly inclined to do so, when there is absence of natural light and I have control over artificial light, I stage self-portraiture. It is important for me to remember that nights are the shadow cast by the mass of our planet earth shielding the light from our star the sun. 
Self-portraiture is a stage and a ritual, where one focuses with their reflection in their reflection. I see my reflection through the see-through window at daylight that transforms into an inward mirror at night-time.
Humidity mural (or BILL2.0), 2019, 200 x 80 cm, Humidity on wall
Humidity extraction device, 2019, 25 x 30 x 15 cm, Plastic pain trays, 3 silica gel dehumidifying bags
This process based installation is a discovery I did in 2019. When putting Humidity absorbent silica gel bags inside paint trays, it is possible to see throughout the arch of a week the level of water rising in the container. I find the water rising quite scary and beautiful. I used this self-extracted water to paint the tracksuit of Bill on the wall. It created an indelible humidity stain in the wall, which was more visible in rainy days and less visible in dry ones, changing intensity with the weather.
Entrance to a Tumulo in Cerveteri, 2021, 109.5 x 138.5 cm, Caput Mortum, linseed oil, prepared linen canvas
 I was too young to remember the first time I visited the Etruscan Necropoli della Banditaccia near Cerveteri, IT, but the images from the books I found in my grandmother's library in October 2020 immediately caught my attention. I was particularly drawn by the photo of a Tumulo -a specifically shaped structure that presented an entrance leading underground to the sepulchre. The vegetation that had grown around and on top of the tomb gave me a hint for life continuation, as if the disintegration of a body meant acceptance of entropy, reconstitution of other bodies in transformation and biological transfiguration. During my visit to the Necropolis in August 2021 I learned that these spiritual sites were actually buried by the Etruscan living societies so that the dead could continue to conduct their activities in the underground. It is thus anachronistic that now the sepulchres are accessible to humans, but in a way it also testimonies the continuation of life into new arrangements of cultures, the transformation of social values and even the transfiguration of older civilizations into new ones. To think that some sites still stand buried under soccer fields and Italian highways. This passage is what the entrance of the Tumulo communicated to me. The anthropological metabolism of death, the opening to otherness, the acceptance of the inevitability of transfiguration, the threshold of time.
De-Structured Grandma, 2021, 180 x 155 x 10 cm, pinewood, burnt pinewood, beeswax, metal wire, screws, broken lighter, fake pearl necklace, polyester dress, woollen shawl, woollen sweater, black cotton blanket.
De-Structured Grandma, 2021, 180 x 155 x 10 cm, pinewood, burnt pinewood, beeswax, metal wire, screws, broken lighter, fake pearl necklace, polyester dress, woollen shawl, woollen sweater, black cotton blanket.
In July 2021 I decided to take down "The Disguise", a sculpture of a weak grandma wearing a wolf mask, and transformed her into a new sculpture, a display of her former limbs and personal effects. The meticulous action of rearranging her body into a displayed catalogue lead me once again to reconsider entropy, this time expressed as a subject dis-identification via the dispersion of personal belonging. What will happen to my former hair as I step out of the hair salon? What shall I do with all my grandma’s stuff after she dies? What will it be of my own shoes in a 1000 years and what is it of Dante Alighieri’s lungs today? Furthermore, if I consider the river Tiber a body, the fields that sprout around it and the mountains that gaze upon it; what has it been of them and what will it be from them? When I ponder upon this constant mashing of particles, as if the particles themselves had freewill, I am triggered to simulate their mashing, replicate their transformation, venerate their mating, birthing and dying. And in doing so I re-discover something unspeakable of them and of myself as well: the feeling of a spirit blowing our common bodies.
Grace, 2020, 57x 60 x 52 cm, cotton carpet from Greece, rubber flip flops, blue thread
Sometimes links of affection can change the way I see objects as personal belongings I inherited or acquired from other people. I experience it as a very time specific, bound to intimate relations -and therefore immensely fragile, phenomenon of transformation. In winter 2020 I was showering in the apartment where I used to live with my former partner who had left from spring. When I finished my shower and moved aside the curtain, his flip flops revealed to me laying on the carpet my mother brought me from Greece. But it was not Greece that I was reading on the carpet: the shape of the flip flop suggested me to read the word GRACE, perhaps as an epiphany of that intimate moment.
Transformed gift (Faggy?), 2021, 45 x 100 x 20 cm, cotton, acrylic fabric, spray paint, metal ring
Transformed gift (AMICI), 2021, 43 x 65 cm, cotton, acrylic fabric
The series Transformed Gifts are repurposed memorabillia that have been given a new shape and existence. The series of work follow a common thread that began in winter 2020 while I was rediscovering my domestic environment. Drifting in a confining atmosphere with a decreasingly structuralised perception of time, my belongings started dissolving around me.
Purgatory, 2021, 132 x 164 cm, oil on prepared cotton canvas
Moving towards phenomena, events, situations, and experiences of great magnitude makes me think of Ulysses sailing towards the mountain of purgatory, narrated by Dante in the XXVI chant of the Divine Comedy. I made the Purgatory painting on a night in May where I felt particularly challenged by the magnitude of occurrences towards me. Purgatory is a semi-human and semi-divine structure made so that existence can be comprehended in both its material and spiritual sides. The purgatory is not a prison, but a process of transition. <<Cinque volte racceso e tante casso lo lume era di sotto da la luna, poi che 'ntrati eravam ne l'alto passo, quando n'apparve una montagna, bruna per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto quanto veduta non avëa alcuna. Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto; ché de la nova terra un turbo nacque e percosse del legno il primo canto. Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l'acque; a la quarta levar la poppa in suso e la prora ire in giù, com'altrui piacque, infin che 'l mar fu sovra noi richiuso>>
Lobster Vision (crop Rectangle), 2020, 122 x 94 x 9 cm Mdf board, oil paint
Lobster Vision (Big Rectangle), 2020, 122 x 91 x 9 cm, Mdf board, oil paint
Lobster Vision (small Rectangle), 2020, 73 x 56.5 x 9 cm, Mdf board, oil paint
After reading about the miraculous biological technology of the lobster eye I was triggered to think about vision in different perceptual registers. The lobster eye works by reflection instead of refraction, therefore instead of spreading light in a wide angle it bounces back the light coming from exactly one point very very far away in space. That is useful in dark environments like the bottom of the sea. Scientists also build a gigantic lobster eye-like machine to look far into space. New technologies of seeing and seeing as understanding open the question not only into the physical existence of sight, but also about vision in the metaphysical dimension. I also wanted to do something about the lobster vision, and approached painting. I try to mix the 3 primary colours to get to black, without having any black reference around me. So only unit of measure is my eye and the color I put on the plate seconds before.
Technology of writing: SPLENDOR, 2018, 150 x 100 x 20 cm, Black board, chalk, yellow mop, 8 polaroid photos, water
Technology of writing: SPLENDOR, 2018, 150 x 100 x 20 cm, Black board, chalk, yellow mop, 8 polaroid photos, water
While I was working at the technology of writing: SPLENDOR I was comparing words and how the mind creates abstract images of them. I was specifically fascinated by trying to imagine, to create an image for the Latin word SPLENDOR. The word refers to brilliance, magnificence, lustre and grandeur, yet is inseparable from the physical element of provenance that is the image of light. There is a poem Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote in the trenches of world war 1, titled Mattina (morning). The poem is immediate, short, hermetic: it condenses all that there is for the senses in the coming of the sun, and for the poetry in waiting the manifestation of new dawn. M'illumino d'immenso. A blackboard is wiped with a wet mop and photographed with a Polaroid camera while its drying. Once completely dry, the word 'splendor' is written on the blackboard in capital letters with a chalk, then the process is repeated cyclically. The Polaroids are presented on the blackboard throughout the process, and the time lapse between fully wet and snapshot is reported on them.
List of actions that deal with states of matter, 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
List of actions that deal with states of matter(blue edges), 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
Take a breath, 2020, 30 x 42 x 3 cm paper, watercolours
In winter 2020 I made the list of actions that deal with states of matter to express a comparison between English verbs and atmospheric introspections, between bodies of waters and emotions, found in expressions such as “head in the clouds”, “storm of thoughts”, “drowning in debt” or even “anchoring in someone”. In the process, I collected an imaginary ontology of physic and atmospheric phenomena used to express and visualize introspections. The written text follows the physic rhythm of matter: it starts with the airy state at the top (flying), falling towards the liquid (drifting) and ending at the bottom with the solid state (anchoring). There is balance and clarity in listing the verbs from the lightest to the heaviest one, giving a sense of vertigo that fills the space of the paper with the logic of a list. Only later, in summer 2021, I began studying Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists (2009), where I found inspiring new facets and interpretations for the work.
Boys by the pool, Out of the water (Colour) and self portrait, 2021, 43 x 29.8 cm, gouauche on paper
In the period of winter 2020, with the disappearance of beginning and end in my life due to the corona crisis, I was drawn to elaborate on the absurd lack of continuity that had flooded my surroundings. Bodies of water are often used to comprehend human circumstances. I consulted Zygmunt Baumann Liquid Modernity, Astrida Neimanis Hydrofeminism, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the myth of Narcissus to elaborate a series of lyric introspections on subject and water. The pool is this artificial mass of water, more or less big, made to fit humans inside. The boys are presences, floating subjects and objects to a voyeur’s gaze.
Blue Pigment (The particles surrounding us), 2021, 27.8 x 24 cm, ultramarine blue pigment, water, ink, paper, salt
Blue Pigment (Liquid time light life), 2021, 27.8 x 24 cm ultramarine blue pigment, water, ink, paper, salt
To empathize with my melting surrounding I watched and collected videos where boys are hanging out in a pool: diving, splashing, immerging, emerging, floating and taking breath. I used drawing to reproduce selected scenes from the videos; focusing between the subjects, the scene and the waters, liquid surrounding. By using different mediums, techniques, sizes and repeating/alternating images throughout the series, I articulated a visual and lyrical vocabulary of boys and pools to ultimately reach my own feeling of drifting in a borderless pool, and to externalize this diving deeper in an instance where space and time are dissolved into the liquid state.
B&W print (A drowning dame reflecting), 2019, 29.8 x 21 cm photographic print (original: oil crayons, laser print, marker)
A Drowning Dame Reflecting, 2020, 112 x 140 cm, cotton curtain, ink
Ophelia’s death in the Hamlet and its pre-Raphaelite depictions, as well as romantic landscape painting as introspection, bathing rituals and Giacomo Leopardi’s poem L’Infinito were aligning in my mind when I first saw the image of a young man emerging from a pool and taking his first breath. I re-discovered in my archive a sketch I made in 2019 on an a4 print inspired by sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, and decided to further elaborate the figure of the dame, a drowning boy. The dame reflecting (leaning on bed) was the following step. I then worked with a photograph of a friend I took in 2017. I was thinking of the modernist literary technique of stream of consciousness from Joyce and Woolf and wanted to find a way to better blend the central subject and the surrounding, as if both were merging into one introspective state. The final work was developed from my original sketch, then worked with a soaked cotton curtain, salty water for absorption, rice for holding the water in place and ink for the contrast. Throughout the pictorial process I often changed surfaces and directions on which the fabric was hanging in order to control as much the spreading of the water. With the special technique developed intuitively, the movement of water and ink through the fabric created bubbling patterns that blur the image in an ethereal watery abstraction, echoing the breathing subject from the original sketch where the figure seems to be respiring just before or right after diving in water.
A Dame Reflecting, 2020, 95,5 x 75,5 cm, paper, permanent markers, purple tape
Colour print (A body is a gateway), 2021, 29.8 x 21 cm photographic print (original: laser print, permanent marker, pencil)
Boys by the Pool series possesses a bucolic impression. The boys play around, swimming, dashing, floating, splashing. Despite their playfulness, their young male bodies become vulnerable to the most banal and conditioning element: water. Their limbs unfold in flamboyant gestures that aim to stay afloat whilst becoming an object of desire to the spectator/voyeur. Young Apollos that bathe in the dangers of water.
Water tryptic (all that you met), 2021, 52.5 x 28 cm ultramarine blue pigment, water, salt
Words abound in my work. Words are social sculptures in process, and writing is a gesture of petrifying meaning. As watery utterances, words float around in poetic efforts to anchor a liquid state of being.
NAU, 2020, 110 x 60 cm, neptune balls, metal rings, blue thread
When I was a child, grandma was reciting to me L'infinito (The infinite) by Giacomo Leopardi. For I am from a different academic generation, I never got to memorize the whole poem, but by fascination got struck by the last verse: "e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare". (And drifting is to me sweet in this sea" -Naufragare I would here translate as drifting, falling through). I was very amused to stretch a relation between the etymology of the verb naufragare (nau/frago) and the phonemic transcription of english noun "Now" (nau). Drifting and present, or litterally ship (nav) and present, are now together.
Laurel Branch (running together from cave to cave), 2020, 30 x 70 x 15 cm, laurel branch, linseed oil, hardwood
I paid attention to the laurel plant for the first time when I saw the portrait of Dante Alighieri by Botticelli. I immediately connected the tradition of poetry with that of the laureates, and the ritual of crowning with bay leaf. Diving deeper in research, I came to know that bay leaf was consumed in the ancient temple of Apollo in Delphi to consult the oracle. Laurel is indeed slightly narcotic and has the effect of lowering blood pressure. Furthermore I recalled the myth of Apollo and Daphne, nymph that was substituted with a laurel plant to escape the god's clutches. In ancient Rome, laurel was believed to contain a fire demon inside, as it would crackle and writhe when burned. That is why the emperor Tiberio, as described by Plinius the Elder, would wear a laurel crown during thunderstorms. This wide research on the plant and its relation to myth, poetry and power, led me to imagine the symbolic technique of cutting out letters from its leaves, thus creating sentences and talking branches.
Aurora incipit aurora, 2021, 150 x 108 cm, Oil crayons, ink, paper / Aurum Orior, 2021, 150 x 113 cm, Oil crayons, ink, paper
The works around the harvest bear the notion of regeneration within ever-changing social and emotional landscapes. The harvest, as well as the sunset and the sunrise, are cycles of abundance and scarcity that happen anew in constant repetition. Aurora is Latin word for morning and by dividing it into Aurum (gold) and Orior (to rise), I realized the connection between morning, sun rising, gold rising and celebration of cycles. I fantasise about ancient Roman Sicilian granaries, the so called Granaries of the Empire, and the labour and rituals connected to accumulating richness from the products of the land. Cycles that echoes the dancing of the earth and sun and culminate in the season of summer, where gold is also sprouting in the fields.
U big black wolf, 2021, 180 x 210 x 15 cm, cotton fabric
"By reading Empire (2000) by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt I rediscovered the notions of universal peace and right as the two foundations for a global, all-encompassing supranational organization that brings together all humans. I began to question the fight for peace and right as a mechanism for assertion of power. I am diffident of power and I am diffident of empire; I want to look for human escapes from its order. Fabrizio de Andre sings in ‘Nella mia ora di liberta’ (In my freedom hour) that sometimes violence is more human than law. It seems to confute Kant < the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me>>, but it actually proposes that failing the moral law must also be accepted as part of being human. This is the case of the wolf. I fantasize about encounters between undefended humans and wolves. I wonder how I would imagine a wolf after an encounter in the dangers of the night, as if little red riding hood was asked to make some drawings. Fear is part of life; found outside the borders of empire."
The beast ascends as the spirit of fear, 2021, four pillars, 60 x 50 x 150 cm, tuff stone bricks, tuff stone dust, pyrite cubes, cardboard, paper, nails
The beast ascends as the spirit of fear, 2021, four pillars, 60 x 50 x 150 cm, tuff stone bricks, tuff stone dust, pyrite cubes, cardboard, paper, nails
I look at the wolf, 2021, 70 x 50 cm, gouache on paper
Wolf Mask, 2021, 70 x 60 cm, paper
Four Pyramids of tears, 2021, 110 x 146 cm, acrylic and oil on Mikado cotton canvas prepared with transparent primer and cuttlefish bones dust
Pyramid of tears and crying wolf, 2021, 115 x 146 cm, oil on Mikado cotton canvas prepared with transparent primer and cuttlefish bones dust
The magic of pyramids lies in the physical challenge of conquering gravity, to escape the ever-calling mass of earth -our material reality, in an attempt to ascend and reach the empyrean realm, a metaphysic plane. To some extents, gravity is hell and pyramids are the empowering proof of that. 
Tears, on the other hand, always go down -that is in environment close to earth; or more precisely always move towards the core of big masses of material. Tears move opposite to pyramids.
Imperial Sheepdog, 2021, 108 x 35 x 248 cm, acrylic paint, mdf, pine, hardwood, wooden broomstick, twine, screws
In relation to safety, freedom and danger, I also have a fascination for the figure of the sheepdog. The sheepdog is a canine, a descendant of the wolf, yet it is trained to act in defence of the sheep and against its kind. Often these guardian animals are forced to wear spike collars or other types of weapon like prostheses to enhance their advantage in a possible fight against the danger of an enemy. This phenomena extends to hunt dogs as well, not to defend a flock, but to attack and bring down the enemy.
The clutches of time 1 and 3, 2020, 21 x 15 cm, Folded newspaper paper, coloured pencils, paper clips
In certain nights where I feel particularly inclined to do so, when there is absence of natural light and I have control over artificial light, I stage self-portraiture. It is important for me to remember that nights are the shadow cast by the mass of our planet earth shielding the light from our star the sun. 
Self-portraiture is a stage and a ritual, where one focuses with their reflection in their reflection. I see my reflection through the see-through window at daylight that transforms into an inward mirror at night-time.
Humidity mural (or BILL2.0), 2019, 200 x 80 cm, Humidity on wall
Humidity extraction device, 2019, 25 x 30 x 15 cm, Plastic pain trays, 3 silica gel dehumidifying bags
This process based installation is a discovery I did in 2019. When putting Humidity absorbent silica gel bags inside paint trays, it is possible to see throughout the arch of a week the level of water rising in the container. I find the water rising quite scary and beautiful. I used this self-extracted water to paint the tracksuit of Bill on the wall. It created an indelible humidity stain in the wall, which was more visible in rainy days and less visible in dry ones, changing intensity with the weather.