DONATELLA SPAZIANI

Donatella Spaziani was born in Ceprano, Italy, in 1970. She graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome where she lives and works. Her research starts from drawing, using painting, sculpture, photography and installation to create images and places where she investigates the relationship between space and the body. Donatella Spaziani’s work builds overlap and alternation of different spatial and mental planes.

In 2001 he won the scholarship for “ART OMI, International Residency “, New York and from 2003 to 2006 “La Seine” of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the same year he participated in the Venice Biennale as part of ZERYNTHIA’s Utopia Station project. In 2007 and 2014 he exhibited at RAM radioartemobile in Rome in CHAMBERS III and XX. In 2008 he participated in the XIX Quadriennale at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, in 2010 at the Shanghai Universal Expo, for Piazze di Roma, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva. In 2011 he exhibited at Italian Artists in New York, for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, and later in Moscow, at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, with the exhibition Arte italiana, curated by R.A.M radioartemobile. In 2013 he participated in Nell’acqua capisco, curated by Claudio Libero Pisano, a collateral event at the 55th Venice Biennale. From 2001 to 2015 he held solo exhibitions in public and private spaces in Milan, Turin, Rome, Naples, Geneva, Zagreb, Osijek and Strasbourg. In 2016 at the Macro Museum in Rome he exhibits with a solo show curated by Costantino D’Orazio and in 2019 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome curated by Anna Cestelli and at the Chini Museo in Borgo San Lorenzo (FI) curated by Alessandro Cocchieri. From 2020 he is present at No Man’s Land Foundation, in Loreto Aprutino (PE) with the permanent sound installation “The Voice of the Poets.” In 2021 for “There is no place like home,” curated by G. Benassi, in Rome and in Naples, for Villa Piromallo,” curated by Zerynthia, text by Giuliano Sergio, he involves in his installations several contemporary poets linked to the two capitals. The solo exhibition “Insieme concertante” is from 2021,

curated by R.A.M. radioartemobile, Italian Cultural Institute, Copenhagen (D). In 2022 “Autoscatti,” Seen from Here, Galleria Umberto Di Marino, Naples.

PH. MARGHERITA ZANARDI

PROJECT TITLE FOR SEMINARYSOGNINTERRA23
AUGUST-2023

How important is the past for imagining and building the future?
Dependent on the past, sometimes it needs to be reset in order to activate new resources. Memory, on the other hand, both historical and collective, is essential to have the direction and solidity needed to face the present and the future.

What are the elements you would like to/and work on further?
Sound and sculpture

Tell me more about the work for Seminaria.
Along the way this year, at points that we might determine together, I would like to paint some of my figures on “neutral” surfaces from time to time, at the bottom, top or eye level. They are small shadows or black silhouettes, depending on your point of view.

A project you haven’t been able to do, but would like to do?
I don’t know.

Often at the center of your work is the physical presence, the co-presence of bodies. Through different languages, ranging from drawing to photography. In these years of social distancing, what are the drifts and new perspectives you have explored? Do you think this period has taken away or given you something?
As for me, it was a devastating period, but as an artist, I deepened my work with sound and poetry; I got to do more choral and performance projects with some, extraordinary, contemporary poets.

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