Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
PORTFOLIO
2018
My works is mainly based on hand drawn video animation, drawings, writings and video installation. e repetition of the same figure, in some cases to get a slight vibration in the hand drawn videos, is a distinguishing
feature of my drawing activity.
In my visual and theoretical research I explore figures, places and practices that can threaten the rationalist productive dominant model, and in particular I am investigating how Western identity arises from what it uses
to define other than itself: animal, nature, exotic, East and pre-history .
My effort is to find in what Western culture refuses, as its opposite or negation, some posible alternative figurations to express the contradictions between what we personally experience and the figures and words our
culture offers to represent us to ourselves. I often research on process of becoming as trasmutations of my personal identity into something unexpected and often rejected by our culture.
MY VIETNAMESE LOVE ,2017
small drawings for a hand drawn video animation projections on big vietbamese paper sheets.
my vietnamese love, drawing serie, small oil pastel drawings on vietnamese cake paper,34x34cm.
falling in love with a Vietnamese guy gave me so much inspiration and intuition on what love could be. e other as a door : no just to love a person but love through the beloved in a continuos give and get dimension.
e images comes from his daily care fory soul and my body.I have realized many drawings and I am working on a new video animation in which the charachters are inspired by love and by Asian Buddhist and Hin-
duist art.
my vietnamese love, small oil pastel drawings on paper,40X50,
cms
WATER DRAWINGS, 2017 ongoing
Fare Buchi nell’acqua,( making holes in the water), oil pastel on chinese silk, 80x150cm, 2017
Can’t escape myself, Oil pastel on silk, 2017
DISSOLUTE NOTEBOOK AND DRAWINGS, 2017
open project with many drawings and notebooks
I have been invited to realize a drawing for a Urban Art festival in Ban Pong, Bangkok province, ailand.I have been hosted 2 weeks in the small city and I had the time to feel the daily spiritual way of life mixed with
politeness, smiles and flowers. I have done some researches on esoterich and popular ai goddesses . I realized this drawings melting together ai goddesses with western Prehistoric Venus figurines shapes, in a
composition recalling some elements and structure of alchemical drawings from Western medieval books. e writing in ai says It is seductive to be seduced, and the sentence For there is no place that does not see you.
You must change your life is from Rilke poem; this sentence reminded me the Western attititude of not feeling comfortable with our own spiritual life, thus looking for so called body-mind practices and spirituality from
East culture and religions.
Dis-orient, preparatory drawings , oilpastel colours, ai plastic flowers for Buddist temples, 40x50cms.
YOGA ANIMAL POSTURES DRAWINGS,2015
Bg drawings on Chinese old paper or naked woman bodies imitating animal posture Asanas,
TURTLE POSE (second version), oil pstel on old chinese paper, 80X160cm,2016
BECOMING ANDROGINOUS,2017
TRYING TO SMILE AS SALAINO IN SAINT JOHN PAINTING BY LEONARDO DA VINCI, 2017
HTTPS://VIMEO.COM/233165956
Saint John by Leonardo da Vinci (1508- Becoming androgynous, installation view, Pereto, photo by Giorgio Benni
e ambiguous glance, in the famous Leonardo, painting portraying his young assistant Salaino as St. John the Baptist, seduced me because of the sexual ambiguity of the portraied face. It seemed to me as an annuncia-
tion of a future world of floating sexual identities. When I began this project I was living in Taiwan, a country which to me seems a place of incredible sexual identity freedom, where often I couldn’t say if the person I
met was male or female. is was so exciting to my eyes.
Saint John by Leonardo gave me the same sensation: the Saint appearing as a female in a male body, and looking as a Dyionisus more then a Saint eating insects in the desert, as it has always been traditionally depicted .
At that time I was doing a research about the androgynous, a figure which compose together the feminine and the male, as the goal of the alchemical transmutation process.
According to the canons of the ancient alchemical tradition, Saint John is considered an androgynous and Leonardo, as we know, was interested in this esoteric tradition.
My project consisted in depicting my self in hundreds drawings while I try to reproduce the same ambiguous Saint John smile. Editing together all the drawings I realized a short video animation, which in loops has
been projected next to an hand written notebook, where I hand wrote all the notes of my teorethical research about the androgynous and the esoteric figure of Saint John.
I used some coloured copy papers which I created with oil pastels to write my notes on the traditional chinese notebook. e copy papers have been engraved with the sentences written in the notebooks. I have been
using the same copy papers to colour my self portraits, thus in my self portraied faces are hidden many sentences from the notebook, that can be revealed only to a concentrated viewer.
A part of this project has been shown during Straperetana, a festival in an ancient village in Abruzzo, Italy.
Becoming androgynous, video still, oil pastel on paper.
Becoming androgynous, video still, oil pastel on paper.
particular of some pages of the Becoming androgynous notebook, different dimensions
Becoming androgynous, notebook1, installation viewb from my studio, particular.
THESE ARE STRANGE TIMES (AND STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING),2016
3 channel video installation, Taipei Contemporary Art Center, 2016
is video installation is composed by 3 hand drawing video facing each othesr:
_THESE ARE STRANGE TIMES AND STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING
_FACING A COCODRILE IN MAKARASANA POSE
_INTERREGNUM (MAN SICKNESS OF THE ANIMAL)
ese is a bit intricated project: i have been asked to think a project for a series of shows at the Taipei Contemporary Art Center, under the name POR-
TRAIT PORTRAIT: A DARK ROOM NAMED HISTORY.
Some ideas, concepts and visions came together in an interlaced 3 channels video installation:e whole installation it’s about a suspended time and an
hipothetical future of a humanity finding a future in anew relation with its animality.
Searching in documents talking about the Japanese rule in Taiwan I have founded a picture showing a woman with a parachute. It seemed very stravagant
the way the Japanese empire display its image of power.
Reflecting on history I was also interested in a sentence written in his prison notebbok by Gramsci : e old is dying and the new cannot be born.It’s talk-
ing about a time suspended between past and future. Our time as a time that cannot accept the new ways of life because it’s stiil immersed in an old moral
that cannot be overcommed by new values.
Added to this reflections I also remembered I have been studying Walter Benjiamin esis on History; i was specially attracted by his intepretation of the
Angelus Novus, a painting by Paul Klee, in which he can see the Angel face turned towards the past which is a chain of catastrophes. A storm comes from preparatory drawing for these are strange times,
the Paradise and has caught the Angel in his wings, is storm is what we called the progress. 70x40cm
THESE ARE STRANGE TIMES (AND STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING), drawings from the hand drawn video animation.
A japanese gheusha floating as an angel from the past in the contemporary society in Japa seems a figurative translatio of the sentences of Gramsci saying we are living in an interregnum suspendend between a past
which can not die and a future that can not born. e gheisha wih her parachute will be caught by a storm, like Angelus Novus in Walter Benjiamin thesis on history
Frames from the video interregnum (man sickness of the animal) , Handwritten storyengraved on black graphite paper
I have been hand writing a text shown as the third video of the installation, called INTERREGNUM (MAN SICKNESS OF THE ANIMAL)
e narration is composed by juxtaposing sentences without saying the various author I was quoting , thus creating a new text a philosophical science fiction writing about an hiphotetical end of history which could
be said by taking literally the profounds words of the philospher Alexander Kojeve when he wrote: e disappearance of Man at the end of History is not a biological catastrophe. Man remains alive as an animal in
harmony with Nature or given Being. (Kojève, Introduction to the reading of Hegel, 158).
_facing a cocodrile in makarasana pose, studio drawin for the hand drawn video animation, oil pastel on paper140x 40cm. Below:frame from the video, particular.
e traditon of Yoga an the Cocodrile are both surviving from a prehistorical time.
Egyptian initiates overcame their fear of death swiiming in cocodrile infested undergroung tunnels; reemerging some meters above in ground the initiates experienced a sort of spiritual reborn.
these are strange times (and strange things are happening), installation view Taipei Contemporary Art Center,2016
SMOKING, 2016
Hand drawn video animation depicting me while smoking weed in a loop.
https://vimeo.com/201123459
Blue fern,drawing engraved on transparent papercovered of oil colour pastel, 60x80cm, light box
Pink Alocasia,drawing engraved on transparent papercovered of oil colour pastel, 60x80cm, light box
blu and pinklotus, drawing on thin paper with oil colour pastel, 25x35cm, light box
gold and pink lotus,drawing on thin paper with oil colour pastel, 65x85cm,, light box
red, pink, gold and pink lotus,drawing on thin paper with oil colour pastel, 45x55cm, light box
Looking inside myself, 2015, 150x180cm,engraved drawing on black graphite paper,180x90cm,2015 Nature is a rethorician place, 150x180cm,drawing engraved on black graphite paper ,2015
Tribute to Ana Mendieta,Founded under ALocasia Leaves, 2015, 150x180cm,engraved black graphite paper
Nature is an impossible thing, 2015, 150x180cm,engraved black graphite paper , positive, 140x145cm; right: Nature in an impossible thing, drawing on paper with Graphite copy paper, negative print, 140x145m,2015
prehistorical giant taiwanese fern,left:drawing engraved on black graphite paper, 65x 95cm; drawing on paper with graphite copy paper, positive print, 65x95cm,2015
project for a frame ,wood, glass, graphite paper,dimansion variable.
SUPERNATURAL, installation view,Chinese Culture University; Taipei,2015
spell bounded lotus pond, serie of indefinite number of A4 drawings ,
oil pastel drawing on paper, 2014
taiwanese super_natura_l_1, oil pastel drawing on paper, 80x120cm,2014 taiwanese super_natura_l_2, oil pastel drawing on paper, 80x90cm,2014
In this projects , drawings and shows I was recreating a sort of artificial forest, in black and white or with fluorescent colours. is project arise from some questions:
What nature is? Does nature exist? “Perhaps nature is only one of those impossible things that which we cannot not desire. We turn to this topic to order our discourse, to compose our memory. "Nature" outside artifactualism is not
so much elsewhere as nowhere.” says Donna Haraway
Science discovered that nature, which is its object of study, does not exist in it self, but what we call Nature exists only as an object of description, poetical or scientifical.
With my projects I am reflecting on the human relation with the so called ‘not- humans’ :nature and animals for examples. I am interested in how Western culture treats Nature, Animal and East (exotic nature, people
and traditions). Tropical forest resume Nature in its greater from and the image of Exotic too. Western culture use to define Asia as its opposite, and while defining it as its opposite West is s orienting itself. e nega-
tion of the other , done by the white colonizers reside in a logic of self recognition.
BECOMING_AMBIENT(BECOMING_ IMPERCEPTIBLE) 2011-13
drawings and video animations projections
Selva Romana, drawing engraved on dozens of 176 A4 graphite copy papers, installation view in my studio, particular.
is huge drawing represents weeds and brambles growing next to my studio in Rome. Brumbles are a chaotic and creative dimension of being. is drawing has been shown hanging on the wall during 2 group show,
but the picture show it hanging in the space in my studio.
WHAT IS STILL INVISIBLE, 2017-ongoing
coloured hand drawn video projection on a drawings engraved on black graphite paper
Hand drawn video projection of super_natura_l and spellbond lotus pond drawings on the brumble.
During my last period in Asia I have been studying Western and Eastern culture and religions through an
esotheric point of view. I have learned that brumble is a plant described in the Bible while is in fire without
burning. e brambke was in front of Mosè while God was talking to him. Bramble in ancient hiero-
glyphic Hebrew is said SeNaH, which literally means ‘what hides things that are still invisible’.
In Hinduism as in Buddhism, the lotus is associated with the birth of divine beings.During meditation in
the lotus position, cosmic energy rises along subtle centres of the body named chakras (wheels) or padma
(lotus) to reach the top of the head and enlightenment. e basic points of this spiritual journey are repre-
sented by lotuses with different numbers of petals.
In my project I wanted to associated this 2 sacred plants by projecting a hand drawn video animation real-
ized by editing all the pictures of the hundreds lotus drawings on the Black bramble backlit by the light of
the video.
frames from the Spellboud lotus pond, hand drawn video animation projected on the brumble drawing engraved on the black graphite paper
TAIWANESE MORNIG MARKET BY NIGHT, 2014
backlit drawing installation,
Meme Art Space, Hong Foundation, Taipei, WESEN, Group show.
In Taiwan it is normal to cross several times night markets, eating snacks, having dinner and being carried by the human flowing river among banks of all kind of food cooked in ways you have never seen before, pas-
sing through colored stalls under white neon lights and signs.e title of my drawing plays with the imaginary one have of a night market. During the nights sometimes I prefered to go in the empty and ghostly mar-
ket taking place in the morning, thus empty at night, taking pictures. I reproduced on graphite paper the ghost atmosphere of the morning market abandoned during night.
SCARAbocchio_ BECOMING-ABJECT, 2014
hand drawn video projection on the floor,200 drawings, bluray ,loop.
https://vimeo.com/103391241 password : alvarodecampos
SCARABOcchio is a word derived from the greek SKARABOS or latin SCARABEUS. e etymological root SCARA in Latin is the same to mean a not well done sketch and a beetle too.
1) SCARAbocchio_ BECOMING-ABJECT: a video projection on the floor, of an hand drawn video, depicting a cockroach lying on his back who can not get up, and shaking my women legs .
e Egyptian Scarab,called Kheperer, was considered a powerful amulet to ward off evil-magical function of eternal rebirth in the evolution and transformation, ensuring improvement of intuitive faculties.
e life in me, my 'beast inside', independent of my will,it is intrinsic to my being and yet so much me. It is experienced as in-human , obscene, but only because it is too human. is piece of flesh called my body,
expresses the abject/divine potency of a Life which consciousness lives in fear of.
I 'm in love with this obscene life in me.
THERE IS AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM,2013
hand drawn video animation projection, bluray, dozens of drawings engraved on graphite paper.
https://vimeo.com/88335733
view,
In the Rome zoo I was struck by the movements of an elephant that was scratching itself against the wall of his cave. He scratched his neck for several minutes, moving harmoniously back and forth. I filmed him, and while later observing
the video in slow motion, he seemed as if he was dancing: he moved his ears, proboscis, tail and legs simultaneously. I drew the animal movements frame by frame without the background and the wall, in order to highlight his rhythmic
behavior, very similar to that of some psychic patients, that sometimes assume stylized behaviors. e title of this animated drawing is "ere's an elephant in the room", an English expression used to say that everybody is pretending not to
see something which actually is a huge imperfection, a situation that in psychoanalysis is called denial. I think the expression is well suited to indicate the condition I observed while visiting the zoos: families with children walking hap-
pily around without being aware of the boredom felt by the animals, fathers merrily pointing out the giraffe, trapped in the endless repetition of its walk from the cave to the net and, inevitably, from the net to the cave.
SARA’ STATO/IT WILL HAVE BEEN, 2012
http://www.arthub.it/index.php?action=video&video=2521
1 channel video projection, 2012, hand drawing video animation, bluray, 7.12 min.
hundred of drawings
It will have been, video still, drawing engraved on graphite paper, 40x50cm.
It will have been, installation view, Doppelganger Gallery, 2013, Fogli. It will have been, video still.
It will have been, installation view of a sequence of drawings framed,, Doppelganger Gallery, 2013, Fogli.
e Big Pipi ( 4 of me pissing from a tree) drawing for the video and drawings installation of the hand drawn video It will have been. backlit graphite paper 60x70cm
EDUCANDA/SCHOOLGIRL,2009
clay stop motion video animation, 1 channel in a monitor,2: 14 min.
http://www.arthub.it/index.php?action=video&video=327, dvd pal 2009
Educanda is a stop motion video animation broadcast on a monitor or a television set. A little girl made with Plasticine was set in a scene reminiscent of the photographs of pupils which used to be taken on their first
few days at school: dressed with their the black school smock, a map in the background, a school table with a notebook on which the pupils’ hands were set . is iconography recurred in many1900s photographs
which I found, I myself am portrayed in the same way in a 1980s school photograph.
e video consists of a single shot of the girl sitting at her desk reading a complicated philosophy text dealing with human nature intended as neotenic, never defined and always potentially alterable through learning.
e character’s voice is by a seven year old girl who at my request read this passage . e schoolgirl’s reading appears like a struggle against the words and sentences whose meaning escapes her.
NEOTENICA,2009
1 channel hand drawn watercolour video animation, hundreds drawings, dvd pal, 2:49 min
Neotenica, video projection, exibition view, <Verona art fair 2011 Neotenica, video projection,VIDEO STILL
Neotenic is a hand drawn video realized with watercolour drawings. It represents a woman learning to walk. ough she keeps falling, she gets up undeterred and tries to stand on her feet again. Each drawing reproduces frame by frame a
video I have found on YouTube where a small kid is learning to walk and he’s filmed by his mother.I have just turned the child’s body into that of a woman I have also reproduced the mother’s shaky camera-work as she moves excitedly in
the room. e sense of instability is also expressed by the very faint watercolour drawings .Neotenic is a scientific term to call some animals, like humans, who never arrived to an adult state.
LACUNA,2007
1 channel hand drawn with carbon paper video animation,4:47 min,
hundreds drawings with carbon paper ink.
Lacuna, exibition view at Galleria Comunale di Arte Contemporanea Monfalcone,VIDEO REPORT 2006_7 Lacuna, video stills, drawings on paper with carbon ink paper
e work’s title, Lacuna, is playing with the semantic ambiguity of this term: in Italian means “lack”, which is the state of the soul expressed in the video, but can also mean “pond” or “lagoon”, which is the setting for
the story in the video. I realized this stop motion animation video in 2007, for my master’s thesis at the end of the two-year specialization course in Cinema and Video at the Accademia di Brera, alongside the theoreti-
cal text Places and figures of repetition. In the latter I analyzed the concept of repetition as related to time and the creation of subjectivity and art, referring to the theories of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Henry
Bergson. If in my thesis I explored the various philosophical and conceptual implications of repetition, in my video I have attempted to interpret abstract concepts poetically and record the inner resonances of my study.
LIVED TIME, 2011
notebook, iron shelf
A notebook of more than 50 pages where I traced with graphite copy paper the underlined quotations from the book of the Russian psychiatrist Eugene Minkowski’s Lived Time.
some pages from the notebook Lived Time, 2011
MOTHER SHADOW 2006_ongoing
around 59 original founded balck and white pictures
I am archiving old black and white photographs I have founded in flea markets in Italy and abroad; In this old pictures taken by parents you can see the shadow of a woman casted on and partially obscuring her children.
Photoghaps are presented in wood canvas founded in flee markets.
EDUCATION:
2002: Master’s degree in PHYLOSOPHY OF THE LANGUAGE at the University of Verona_ 110/110 cum laude. Published thesis.
2003: European Social Found course AUDIOVISUAL WRITER Centro Studi Dedalo, Brescia.
2007: Master degree in “ART AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES” ,Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan. 110/110 cum laude. Published thesis
2008 : second level Master degree ART, ARCHITECTURE AND TERRITORY, Faculty of Architecture of Roma Tre University in Rome and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. Published thesis.
2013:LICENSE TO TEACH PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY in High school, SISS, University of Roma III, Philosophy department
SOLO SHOW
IL FONDO SALE ALLA SUPERFICIE (SENZA CESSARE DI ESSERE FONDO) Galleria Doppelgaenger, Bari,2015.
SUPER_NATURAL, Department of Landscape Architecture, ,USR27, Chinese Culture University, Taipei,2015.
BECOMING-ABJECT_SCARABOCCHIO, Kuandu Museum of art, Taipei, 2014
CORPI E GUSCI, Galleria Esposta, Verona,2011
RIVELAZIONE DI UN MONDO, Galleria Area, Associazione Culturale Cidac, Brescia,2006.