Samantha Passaniti from Porto Santo Stefano (GR)
With which objects and spaces of your daily life are you interacting the most?
My quarantine as a recluse in my small apartment is something that has really tested me: I live in a very small space with no chance to breathe in the open air, not having a balcony. So my days pass in a few square meters that I fill with the things I love to do most. Certainly the PC screen as the only connection with the virtual world and my window, it too has become a screen towards the natural world, are my two points of reference, like two paths that make me, after all, feel good walking along them even without being able to leave the house. Plus the books, yoga, cooking is my job that I continue to do with extreme methodicality even if on reduced sizes, mark the rhythm of my days to which I always try to make sense, because I believe that now more than ever there is a need for a positive attitude, productive and planning towards a future that does not look like the brightest for anyone, but which I want to continue to imagine as the most beautiful because it is the only one that is granted to us in our existential experience, here and now.
We are dealing with a new time and space. What are you discovering or rediscovering about yourself?
I have thought a lot about this aspect having a lot, a long time to do it and I must say that in reality I have not discovered or rediscovered anything new. Certainly, however, I have reconfirmed certain choices that have led me to be what I am today. I have always experienced a lot of hardship: be and decide to be an artist in times of crisis, when you are not lucky enough to be born rich, it is not easy. I have always lived with the constraints that derive from it and even if all this is sometimes really complicated, I have never stopped giving value to my time by never giving up on my dreams. I decided to stay and live in the small Tuscan town where I was born because the need for contact with nature is fundamental for my research, thus renouncing the social and cultural exchanges that large cities offer, that I try to attend while traveling as soon as I have the opportunity. All this path, it has increased my degree of resilience and the ability to contact myself, and that is why perhaps my quarantine has been quite peaceful, as if in a certain sense I was partly used to isolation. I usually spend a lot of time alone drawing from the inner world rather than relationships with the outside world, I've always lived with little, I have always been satisfied with simple things which are the most important, then, basically I continue my battle even today with a smile.
What you're missing? Your personal experience of "absence" and "lack".
In addition to my studio, which is my living space of expression, I certainly miss being able to communicate terribly, talking and laughing with the people I love: looking into the eyes of the people I miss is something I wish I could do as soon as possible, without having to always pass everything through the filter of technological devices.
Another aspect that I strongly miss is feeling free in nature, to be able to go to the seashore, being able to feel the sun on your skin without having to see it only from the window. In summary, a chat with a friend or a friend while walking by the sea is definitely the first thing I will do as soon as possible.
How do you imagine the world, when everything will start again?
I have no idea how the world will change and if it will really change. I am sure that this moment represents a kind of watershed between a before and after Covid and we have been allowed to observe and experience both of these eras firsthand.. As an incurable dreamer, I hope that any change will be positive and that, thanks to this extreme experience, many consciences can be awakened. Many have already done so, many artists and among them myself, for years they have been calling for a slowdown, an awareness of moral values, social and ecological that could really make us all more human and an easing from the frenzy always dictated by unscrupulous economic interests. This whole capitalist and frenetic system no longer works, it is destroying everything, it is destroying ourselves and collapsing before our eyes: there, I really hope that these aspects can finally be evident to everyone even if I am aware that they undermine certain dynamics, it will be a really tough battle but absolutely necessary. Today we are forced to slow down, and maybe we will realize that you can live well all the same, rather, you can live a lot, much better.
To date, what have been the immediate consequences of the spread of Covid-19 on your work for you and what do you think the long-term consequences may be?
My artistic research was born as a reflection on the relationship between man and nature, an analogy that becomes matter and image through the various types of materials that I collect in the environment and which I subsequently rework in my studio: it is a poetics that wants to bring man back to his place in the universe by resizing the power he does not have and never had in the presence of the greatness of nature. J.W. Goethe in his text “Nature”, collected in the book “The metamorphosis of plants”, he states that we are continually acting on nature but that we have no power over it. I believe that this historic moment is reaffirming this concept, that I have always shared. With my work I have always wanted to express a return to harmony entirely through respect for the environment that hosts us, and all this sad situation we are experiencing has simply confirmed this idea of mine, which I will continue to pursue with even more determination, because maybe I have had proof of being on the right path, at least with the heart and with the thought.
Samantha Passaniti born in Grosseto in 1981 She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and in 2015 attended a postgraduate course at the Slade School of Art in London.
His artistic research is focused on experimenting with natural materials collected in the environment that become the object of reflection and investigation on the complexity of human relationships and existential experience. His pictorial and installation works arise from a continuous relationship, dialogue and exchange between inside and outside, between the intimate world and the environment, between soul and nature, between existential experience and natural cycles.
In 2018 was selected by the international organization ReArtiste for a group show at the MC Gallery in New York. Both in 2018 than in 2019 is among the finalists of the Arteam Cup award. In 2019 is the winner of an artistic residency focused on the link between art and nature on the occasion of the Arteam Cup competition 2019 and was selected for another residence at the Arteventura contemporary art center in Andalusia, Spain. Among the main solo exhibitions in the 2018, Natural consideration curated by Davide Silvioli at the Art G.A.P. Gallery of Rome. In the coming months he will participate in a group show in Athens, at the Art Number Gallery 23 based in London and Athens. www.samanthapassaniti.com