• Since my work has appeared in a few exhibitions over the years, I thought I'd gather them all here: Rotterdam 2023 (Publishing, xpub collective, Worm) Rotterdam 2023 (Publishing, xpub collective, ZineCamp, Worm) Leiden 2020 (Poetry, Collective, BplusC) Leiden 2019 (Poetry, Collective, BplusC) Leiden 2018 (Poetry, showcasing poetry issues, collective, BplusC) Athens 2012 (Photo manipulation, Individual, Mirror Mirror) I hope there will be many more to come!
  • "Desperation" was a thought inspired by the COVID-19 times, but it applies to every prolonged instance of trauma, that eventually becomes unconscious, and it takes time, distance and healing to realize its true dimensions. As a piece, it incorporates elements from the past, such as a mysterious old recording I've been curious about for years and recently retrieved from an old mini-cassette recorder, and a footage of a place very deeply connected to childhood memories. It's more of a poetized thought than an actual poem, and although it's closer to prose I decided to follow the voice rhythm to create the written lines rather than doing it the other way round. Desperation Looking back there was a lot of desperation but we couldn't feel it. It was like a filter all over reality. A reality that you get used to like every other reality. There was desperation. It had a color. It was mostly grey but not just grey a little bit of dark blue, also. Sadness, I guess. There was, but we couldn't see it. But now that the filter that film that was covering the horizon and the sky and the reflection of the light now that this is gone yeah, in hindsight there was a lot of desperation.
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  • With "Care" I feel that I go back to the roots of my love for art. Music was in the beginning of it all and now it's time to reconnect with it in a manner that feels complete. "Care" was a poem in the making that I had forgotten about for a little while and when I found it again I saw that it was more of a micro-song. It could have taken many forms, and I can definitely hear me screaming the lyrics in a different version, but this is how it crystallized (at least for now). The visuals were also brewing for a while in the background, with ideas revolving around time-lapses and chalkboards. Care I don't want you to care for me care is for the hospice of emotions I want your voice to burn like love turn away from the care-ful cold where feelings go to die.
  • Metaphors never cease to amaze me. They are often better and conciser at getting the meaning of the most abstract notions across than a simple description of a situation. As flexible molds, they shape and embody our individual thoughts helping us make sense of our experiences in a collective manner. In this piece different metaphors come together to express a sense of womanhood compiled by different experiential states.
    metaphors MenI had three pens lying around.None of them really worked.EmptinessShe started counting her ribs. There, in the middle of the forest. When she came back from her walk, she called immediately her doctor: “I need to have an X-ray asap; there’s something wrong with my insides.”MotherShe was picking the hairs from the floor, one by one, or in tufts, if they were clustered. With a sense of urgency. The same sense of urgency she had when the phone rang. Wired landline. Darting from the kitchen, running down the marble corridor, sometimes deciding within seconds at the kitchen door which phone to run for, the one in the living room (closer) or the one in the bedroom (more private). Back to hair picking. She would often go in absurd bowed circles, like a weird alien dancer. She would let you talk and in the middle of a sentence she would fix her eyes on a corner and, already bowing, she would go there straight to pick up the hair. What does depend upon hair? I often wondered. Not anymore. VoltaireI will not spend another night with you in my life, but we can still text if you like. You can read more about the poetry issues project here.
  • 2023 is closing with poetry issues #28, clearly showing a direction that I am feeling increasingly comfortable with: The combination of sound and image, captured and edited in manners that make them compete poetically with the text they come with, and the integration of text into a vivid visual style. Painting and drawing are coming back into the picture, and I dare to be myself more than ever. Call Me The public phone booth, where generations have spent hours and small fortunes talking to friends, family and lovers, where tears were shed and laughter echoed, seems to be a curiosity of the past, a ghosted presence in the urban landscape. One of my plans for the future is to re-imagine the phone booth. For now, I present here the best example of a public phone booth's organic role for (and inevitably its integration into) lively subcultures. This little jewel is handling many themes at once. I was fumbling with the topic of unrequited love in my mind for quite some time and then one day, one of the first nice ones, I was lying on a bench looking at the sky and there was this optical illusion of the pole falling while the sky remained still (of course it was the moving clouds). So then the two topics mingled, and more layers came, especially the broader one, of living in one society but in essentially different realities. I didn't use any elaborate phrasing but I believe the meaning gets across, all the more through the simplicity of the language.
    Reflection For a second I thought we were two-gether mirroring each other sharing an understanding of this world that is melting like ice-cream on hot asphalt. "Stubborn" is a commentary on roles, contemporary life, love and how looking up to someone shapes us. I enjoyed how the composition came together, through a mix of loose ideas and experimentation, and the result is highly personal but in certain ways also bigger than a mere obituary to a god or a father.
    Stubborn Dear father, I am very ambitious as I was made in your image and likeness. It is true that my goal is to be successful in life just as you wanted me to be but my success is divided into late mornings and long nights into loves not watered down into potentials patience, expectations and compromise. Dear father, I am living in a garden of steel when all I ever wanted were flowers and interactions free of roles: Skirts and pants united. I wanted to be rich but my non-accumulative currency would be the primary formation of meaning – experience, as a principle. For you, dear father, I still want to be the perfect son although I was born a stubborn daughter. Sicily I am changing. Growing. As an artist and as a person. This means that I am integrating and using the past as fertile soil for a happier life. In my artistic practice this translates into…

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