Marika Vicari from Creazzo (WE)
How your way of working has changed?
I work constantly on the creation of my drawings and on my research relating to my studies but at this moment I have reviewed times and spaces that I am lucky enough to share with two interesting artists, my husband, also a painter, and our five-year-old son who loves music and painting. The mental rather than physical coexistence of a single space (house + one of the two studios) amplifies a path (I would say rather sketchy in its structure but colorful and multifaceted) made of paper rolls, tele, pencils, brushes, colors… Those who know me know how much this differs from my personal way of working alone and analytically but it is, after all, fun and regenerating. It feels like we are back in residence in some European city (in recent months we lived Paris like this) but actually today, lost in an indefinite time or looking with more distance, I think back to my time at the Academy in Venice, between shared spaces in the atelier, times, suspended dialogues on art, dreams and about life… What then became reality.
With which objects and spaces of your daily life are you interacting the most?
Certainly with my studio and our house. Waiting for the rescheduling of the exhibitions (one of these ready, after eight months of work, it was supposed to open in March at the Punto sull'Arte Gallery), of events and residencies in Europe, I'm doing a little’ of research between different materials and creating a new series of drawings on paper. At the same time, I have taken over some personal artistic and curatorial projects (including the programming of 18. edition of the ART STAYS Festival, a great event that will be postponed to autumn due to Covid-19), therefore I often have to deal with researching books and essays. I also interact more than usual with new technologies, intricate and fascinating world that allows me to explore different instruments, to virtual realities, connect with friends, artists and curators around the world or more simply to teach with my students.
We are dealing with a new time and space. What are you discovering or rediscovering about yourself?
Awareness of time (or not at all) he becomes an instrument and medium to free the mind and open it to the recording of silence, of the change affecting morphology, the structure and geography of new spaces. I'm savoring the value of distance again, from confusion, by the people, from the emptiness itself that I often find only late in the evening or at night, when finally in front of the page of a book, a blank sheet of paper stops me, leaving a long day behind. In the silence, in the apparent void, I breathe by giving voice to things, I collect my thoughts, and I'm starting a new project, tracing new shapes on the sheet.
What you're missing? Your personal experience of "absence" and "lack".
I especially miss travelling, put my backpack on my shoulder and go out to be able to freely or simply walk, fill my eyes with shapes, luci, colors, perceptions: counterpoints of images and thoughts. For now I have replaced nature with our garden, the seedlings sprouted from the seeds that we planted with my son on the balcony, or with the large collection of books we have in the studio but I miss looking, be outside the window, being a “system” related to the world…
How do you imagine the world, when everything will start again?
The world will start again but it won't be easy. We should remember all this that we would now like to push away as quickly as possible, because this subtractive operation, to which Covid-19 has forced and led us for all these infinite months, catalyzes, and I say this with all the urgency and alarmism of the case, our own attention to the fragilities of the future. It worries me that we will all have to find ourselves capable of looking the priorities of things in the face, first of all our lives and to make use of new structures, form, relational methods. I can't say if we are really ready for this big change, but we will certainly have to grit our teeth, review our own projects to build our future...
Marika Vicari (Vicenza, 1979) graduated in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and graduated in Design and Production of Visual Arts, draws and paints, in small and large format with graphite on paper and wood, trees, woods, landscapes, the path and the silence offering the public a personal and exclusive encounter with nature. Through the tree, look at the dynamics of the earth, of the world by recording its human transformations. He lives and works in Creazzo (WE). From 2005 she is also an independent curator and Creative Director of ART STAYS, Contemporary Arts Festival in Ptuj. He has numerous personal and collective exhibitions to his credit in Europe, United States, represented by the Gagosian gallery, Brazil, Canada and China. Among the latest projects carried out and which will be presented shortly, the exhibition Nature from PUNTO SULL'ARTE of Varese, artist reference gallery. He also collaborates with Romberg Arte Contemporanea, Sist'art gallery and Galleria L'Occhio.