Interview by Dafne Crocella

The artwork presented at the COMEL Award was the first with which I began experimenting with aluminium. It is a cold, sharp, and reflective material, but also alive, capable of receiving light and returning it in ever-changing ways.

The artwork Bituminifera Divisa was selected by the Jury of the COMEL Award among the 13 finalists of the XII edition, and then also chosen by the public, winning the award. How did you experience this double recognition? What do you think in your work manages to reach and touch the public?

Being selected among the thirteen finalists by the Jury of the COMEL Award was a great satisfaction. Receiving the Audience Award is also a recognition that holds special value for me, as it stems from a silent dialogue with those who chose to stop in front of my work and recognized something of their own in it. I believe what struck the public most in my work is the contrast between beauty and defacement, between the brightness of aluminium and the darkness of the pictorial and material fragments. But above all, I think what came through was the drive that animates much of my sign-pictorial repertoire: the tension toward origin, birth, and primordial unease. In conversations with the public during the inauguration and award ceremony, I was able to see how much of what moves my research had reached them. It is always reassuring for me to realize that the work arrives before any explanation.

The artwork appears as a large seed or a vagina opening up. A clear reference to the force of life. This theme is an important part of your creative research—were you pushed to participate in this edition of the Comel Award dedicated to strength, by this?

Certainly, in my work the body, identity, and the feminine dimension play a central role. Bituminifera Divisa is an imaginary plant, it is also a seed that recalls a vagina, a creature suspended between nature and artifice. From its center emerges a black substance, which for me symbolizes both vital sap and the fragility and wound of the relationship between human beings and nature.

The plant seems to open and split, as if seeking a new space to be reborn, despite everything. Through this work, I aimed to convey the unpredictability of the natural world and the fear of its transformation at our hands, as well as the possibility that from the fracture, a new form of life may sprout—different and perhaps more aware, regenerated. It is one of the hybrid, sensual yet fierce creatures from my repertoire of almost alien plants.

Bituminifera divisa, 2025

The title Bituminifera Divisa is a complex key to accessing the work. What does it suggest to the observer? What are you specifically referring to?

The artwork is created with an interesting mixed technique where plastic and metallic elements blend with natural inserts, arousing in the observer the desire to get closer, to look more carefully, to touch, to blow on it, to interact. Is interaction with the public an aspect you seek in your work? What story do the materials you use have, and how do you choose such unpredictable combinations?

Atrivulva quadridens, 2025

In the artwork, there is a skillful use of aluminium that gives brightness and dynamism thanks to its reflectivity. What relationship do you have with this material? Had you already used it in your work?

The artwork presented at the COMEL Award was the first with which I began experimenting with aluminium. It is a cold, sharp, and reflective material, but also alive, capable of receiving light and returning it in ever-changing ways. I started using this material a couple of years ago, thanks to the suggestion of my professor Paolo Gobbi, whom I thank because he pushed me toward a technical and expressive challenge that proved precious and suited to my research. Since then, I have created other works on aluminium, discovering its delicacy, lightness, ductility, and strength.

In your artwork, the imaginary herbarium takes space. Can you tell us something about this project and its relation to the work you presented at the COMEL Award?

My recent work takes shape starting from my imaginary herbarium, born as an attempt to exorcise a complex and dark period such as the postpartum can be. This collection of multiform plants I titled Neraria because, born in the midst of the pandemic, at a time when nature was easier to imagine than to live, it reflected the feeling of estrangement and unease I was experiencing. Each plant is the result of mixtures between ordinary stimuli, everyday objects, but also memories, bodily sensations, and states of mind. The work I presented at the COMEL Award is a natural evolution of my herbarium.

Neraria Herbarium

Janiflora Rubra Nigroflua

Your creative research moves on a minimal chromaticism, almost exclusively black and white. What is this choice linked to?

Initially, black and white was a spontaneous choice; the first sketches were made with a Bic pen or graphite. Over time, I realized that this choice was deeply suited to the type of images I wanted to create: delicate but also granitic and hostile. In my latest works, red has also appeared, which for me recalls the body, tissues, veins, nerves, organs. The beige/ivory background is present in most of my works on paper, canvas, or board. It has been a conscious choice from the beginning because it recalls lived paper and gives the work the indispensable organic nature typical of ancient herbariums.

Your technique recalls the work of masters of the twentieth century. Which names have influenced you the most and why?

The territory where I live played a fundamental role in my discovery of painting and art in general. Among the 20th-century masters who influenced me are certainly Mario Giacomelli, with his personal photographic vision so pictorial and unreal, but also sculptors such as Valeriano Trubbiani and Arnaldo Pomodoro. Thanks to a dear friend, I had the fortune to approach and fall in love with the painting of the late Gothic and Renaissance present in the Marche region—for example, the Salimbeni brothers, Vittore and Carlo Crivelli, Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Lotto, among many others. A strong influence on me came from classical music, as I began playing the piano at a very young age. I also love cinema—for instance, oriental cinema has contaminated me with its narrative delicacy and its post-apocalyptic or cyberpunk visions. In reality, influences continue to expand every day among artists of the past and contemporary ones.

In Continuum, Installation view, IIC New York

Semina Paradoxa #1 e #2 (installation view)

In spring there will be your solo exhibition at Spazio COMEL. Do you already have something in mind that you would like to present?

Yes, I have several works in mind, in aluminium but also textile works, works on paper, on board, and on canvas. I am very happy to be able to return to Spazio COMEL with a solo exhibition and I hope the ideas I have in mind will continue to multiply.

Besides the exhibition at Spazio COMEL, are there other future projects you can reveal to us?

In March I will participate in an artist residency in Palma de Mallorca, an experience I await with great curiosity. I already have several projects in mind to develop, and I am certain that that territory will only give me new stimuli and directions. Moreover, lately I have been working on new ideas born from the encounter of two dimensions: the memory of the maternal trousseau and my symbolic botany.