by Margaret Sgarra, contemporary art curator
Serena Ciccone is a visual artist who explores the ephemeral and transitory through light, transparency and color. Her installations are forms which manifest in space, suggesting dreamlike, fairy-tale and abstract imagery. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and projects, and is a finalist for the Combat Prize.
Installation is central to your research. This medium integrates into different contexts, articulated in various locations, creating a genuine dialogue. Can you explain the relationship established between artwork and space in your work?
In reality, installation is not the core of my research. The practice with which I identify the most and feel most represented by is painting: first and foremost I define myself as a painter. Installation was born as a natural extension of the research I developed under the title Sotto la superficie delle cose, an investigation of the relationship between body and space, and the way these two dimensions interact through matter. In this sense, installation represents for me an opportunity to transcend the confines of painting and engage with three-dimensional space, addressing the specific issues of the space hosting the work. It is precisely at this point that my interest in architecture takes on a central role in my research. Architecture, in fact, does not merely construct and organize space, but contributes to determining its perception and, through this, influences the way individuals inhabit it, navigate it, and relate to others. Space thus also becomes a tool through which individual experiences and forms of community are constructed. It is from this awareness that I consider the relationship between work and space to be fundamental. My intervention, therefore, does not end with the creation of the work itself, but is fulfilled when the work enters into dialogue with the place that hosts it and with the bodies of those who pass through it. It is this relationship (work, space and body) that is, ultimately, one of the central aspects of my research.
Some of your installation-like works seem to reach out to the viewer. Do you think the viewer has a role in interpreting meanings, or is there a tendency for you to suggest answers?
The viewer constitutes the third fundamental element in the relationship between the work and the space: the body. It is through their presence that the work is completed. Without the body that passes through it, observes it and experiences it, it necessarily remains incomplete. The relationship with the viewer therefore represents another dimension of my research. I’m not interested in offering unequivocal answers, nor in necessarily directing the interpretation of the work towards a pre-established meaning. On the contrary, I consider my works as open devices, capable of accommodating a multiplicity of interpretations and meanings, which are activated by the encounter with the experience, memory, and personal legacy of those who experience them. The work thus becomes a space of possibility, in which meaning is not entirely determined by the artist, but is also constructed through the viewer’s experience. Part of my research consists precisely in observing and questioning this relationship: how the viewer interacts with the work, how their body traverses its space and, above all, to what extent the work manages to connect with those who encounter it.
In your research, light and transparency take on a sculptural quality. Can you explain how your projects are born and what their starting and ending points are?
Absolutely, light and transparency are fundamental elements of my research and derive directly from my painting practice. Installation work, in fact, arises as a sort of three-dimensional transposition of painting, that is, what occurs in the painting through transparencies, glazes, and stratifications is brought into the installation and brought into relation with the material, the light, and the body. In this, tulle was a surprising and highly versatile material. In this process, light obviously plays an active role. It is not simply an element which illuminates the work, but enters fully into its construction and perception. Through light, I investigate matter, its particles, the possibility that it dissolves, overlaps, becomes visible or, conversely, escapes perception.
Light thus becomes a tool through which to continue, in space, the exploration of surface and depth that is part of my painting. I don’t believe there is a true beginning or end to my research. I consider it rather as a constantly evolving process, oriented toward an almost frantic search for a truth that, however, never presents itself as something definitive. It is a quest that tends to enter and exit the frame, from painting to installation and again from the three-dimensional dimension to the pictorial. The installation thus becomes a device of presence, a way to take painting beyond its own boundaries and test its possibilities in space. For this reason, I don’t think of the conclusion of a work as the conclusion of the research. A work can have a beginning and an end in the specific moment of the exhibition, which represents a sort of single act capable of condensing and making visible a specific moment of my journey. But the research doesn’t end there. Each work remains a stage, a temporary manifestation of a process which continues to transform. There is no end, in this sense. Rather, there is a continuous becoming.
Do you have any artists who inspire you? What struck you about them?
Studying the Bauhaus and the artists who animated the school in the 1930s was fundamental to my education. It was precisely through my engagement with that experience that I began to identify the connections between painting and architecture more clearly and, through them, between space, the individual, community, and the political dimension. Among the artists who have played a significant role in my career, I cannot fail to mention Paul Klee, especially for the way his research connected form, space, and perception, and also for his spiritual quest, aimed at seeking an invisible reality. Over time, however, my work has progressively distanced itself from these influences, transforming them into more personal questions. The installation, in particular, also stems from a question I asked myself about architecture: what kind of space would we have if it were conceived starting from a female experience? The history of Western architecture has been predominantly built and designed by men, and this has led me to imagine a different, more permeable architecture, capable of fostering a continuous exchange between interior and exterior, between individual and environment, between private and collective space. This is a reflection I don’t intend to propose as absolute truth, but rather as a possibility, a vision through which questioning the way space is designed and, consequently, the way we inhabit it. I’m interested in asking whether a different experience of space can also generate different forms of relationship and community. Among living artists, a key figure in my career is Alfredo Pirri, who was also my professor. His teaching was fundamental not only in helping me identify and develop my pictorial language, but above all in providing me with the necessary tools to view reality as something to be continually questioned. Through his work and his teaching, I developed the idea of art as a tool of knowledge, as a possibility to investigate reality beyond what is immediately visible and, in this sense, also as a form of spiritual experience. It’s an attitude that I still feel deeply present in my work: art not as an answer, but as the possibility of knowing, questioning and making visible what we don’t fully understand yet.
As an artist, what are your goals and what are you seeking through art?
This is a question that always puts me in a bit of a bind, because I don’t think of my work in terms of pre-established goals. The need to make art stems, first and foremost, from a personal urgency, a sense of unease, a pain and a profound need to understand what happens to me and what surrounds me. Over time, however, through practice and study, this individual need has gradually opened up to a broader quest, one that tends toward the universal. I don’t know if this is something I can truly achieve, but I think this is the direction my work is moving toward: starting from myself to seek a connection with what is outside me, with others, and with the world. I could say that through art I seek myself, but at the same time I seek to understand. It’s a conception of art as a tool of knowledge and as a device capable of being within life, of engaging with it, and of producing a form of experience. I also firmly believe in art’s ability to appeal to everyone, regardless of their level of preparation or specific knowledge. Unlike other disciplines, art can directly influence perception, through the senses, and for this very reason it possesses profoundly universal access. A work of art can be encountered before it’s even explained, it can generate a reaction, a sensation, or a question even in the absence of theoretical tools to interpret it. This is also why I believe in the political role of art. I don’t understand politics as the need to explicitly adhere to current issues or to use art as a tool to take an immediate stance. I’m thinking, rather, of a deeper political dimension: the ability of art to influence perception, to change our way of looking and, through this, our way of being in the world. Personally, I see the work of art as a universal and, if you want, ontological device. A tool through which the individual can question himself, connect with others and contribute to the construction of a collective consciousness. Perhaps this, then, is the ultimate meaning of my work: starting from a deeply personal experience and attempting to transform it into something that can also belong to others.
What are your upcoming projects, and where is your research headed?
Right now, I’m trying to make my work more concrete. I’ve opened my own studio and registered for VAT. The goal is to gradually build a professional practice that can develop both through sales channels that will allow me to finance my research and through the creation of opportunities and spaces for sharing. At the same time, I’m working on my exhibition presence. I’ll be participating in Paratissima in Turin and I’m trying to organize an exhibition in L’Aquila, Abruzzo. These opportunities are important to me, not only for the opportunity to exhibit, but above all because they allow me to connect my research with different contexts and audiences. Research-wise, I’m also in a particularly intense phase. I feel a strong resurgence of interest in the macroscopic and, consequently, a urge to return to the figurative. It’s something that’s still in its infancy and I’m trying to understand it. I don’t know what form it will take yet, nor how it will fit into the path I’ve developed so far. ThereFore I find myself in a phase of great transition, perhaps even more so than of definition.