strinna.elisa@gmail.com
Education
Masters in Visual Art at IUAV, Venice, Italy
September 2010 Graduated with First Honor
Academy of Fine Arts, Bachelor on Painting
Selected Exhibitions
2015
-Contest ArtLine Milano, Italy-SOMA Summer, in Mexico City, Mexico-On Still Life at at Mart Museum in Rovereto, Italy-Conversation on the Origin of Time at the Greenhouse of Giardini della Biennale, Venice
2014-Open Museum, Open City at MAXXI
2013-2013 Awards at Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló (Spain) with Seismic Symphonies
2012-Taiwan Symphony at Modern Monsters, the 2012 Taipei Biennial in Taiwan
2009-And Yet it Moves, at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
Residencies and Awards
Residency2014, two-month residency at the East Normal University in Shanghai (China).
2010-2011, nine-month residency at Pastificio Cerere Foundation, Rome, Italy,
Cite International des Arts, in Paris.
2008-2009, one year of artist studio at Bevilaqua Foundation, Venice, Italy.
Awards2014, Shanghai Prize, Winner -a two-month residency at the East Normal University in Shanghai (China) with final show at
BUND 33 in Shanghai.
2013, Premio Combat, sculpture section winner, Livorno, Italia /Italy - the prize consist in the amount of 3000 euro
2011, 6ARTISTA, winner, Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome, Italy, the prize consist in 6 month residency in Rome at FondazionePastificio Cerere and 3 months at Cite International des Arts, in Paris with a final exhibition at Macro Museum curatedby Vincenzo de Bellis, in Rome (Italy).
Other Artistic Activities
16th Advanced Course in Visual Arts at the Fondazione Ratti in Como, with Hans Haacke as a visiting professor
Ojo Estelar_Project in collaboration with the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, Chalco, Mexico, 2015
When in Mexico, during summer 2015, I met Genaro Amaroltamirano, the director of the Community Museum of the Xico valley in Chalco, on the outskirts of Mexico City.
Together with other locals, Genaro set up a self-run museum in Chalco that collects pre-Colombian artefacts people find throughout the area that would otherwise be lost.
When I visited the museum with Genaro, one particular statuein the collection caught
my eye, El mirador del cielo, which shows an ancient Aztec observing the sky.
When I mentioned this toGenaro he told me an interesting story. Some time before, he and an archaeologist, had discovered the tomb of an ancient astronomer. In the
tomb they found a stone placed at ground level, and a round water basin, which
acted as a mirror to reflect the night time sky, a kind of pre-cinema. Unfortunately, the community did not have the necessary funds to restore the tomb and were
forced to reseal it. Therefore, together with the Xico’s Museum, we decided
to design some prototypes to reproduce diverse “Ojo Estelar”.
The prototypes will be placed in the Xico Community Museumgarden in Chalco
and then, in Italy.
Quattro Stagioni_Clarinet B 1: Temperatures, Clarinet B 1: Humidity, Clarinet MI B: Rain, Bass Clarinet: Wind 3 Quattro Stagioni 2 min, 2015; Concert for Clarinets; photo: Materia, Novi Ligure, 2015;
video: https://vimeo.com/147013417
To each weather graph has been superimposed the tonal scale of its assigned
instrument. Each note is one day. I assigned musical value of 1/8 to each day. Spring is a dynamic melody, full of quick changes, diversified; Summer is dynamic as
well but more mature. It turns suddenly into Fall, which has a softer tone,
dark and perhaps melancholic, which then mingles into the dull Winter
time, which in the end is slowly revived. It is interesting to note that the weather
data of one year, in order to acquire meaning in the language of music,
is reduced to a much shorter time, about two minutes. This experiment
seems to suggest that natural phenomena, in their synergy, following some harmonic
laws.
On Still Life_Basket of Fruit Variations n. 1, 2, 3, prints on cotton paper 64 x 46 cm, 2011;
photo credits: Carlo Baroni, Project Wall, Mart, Rovereto;
photo credits: Carlo Baroni, Project Wall, Mart, Rovereto;
On Still Life_7 Untitled Serie, watercorlors on cotton paper, 22 x 21 cm, 2015;
photo credits: Carlo Baroni, Project Wall, Mart, Rovereto;
photo credits: Carlo Baroni, Project Wall, Mart, Rovereto;
On Still Life _9 Natura Morta #1, photographic print, 22 x 17 cm, 2015;
The complex “Variation on Fruit Basket” after Caravaggio by Elisa Strinna crosses
one of the most represented genders and famous masterpieces in the art history,
as a hidden witness of a peculiar contemporary canon which quotes a modern classicism. The observation of the variety of tropical fruits within a
roman market in 2011 has induced a series of reflections which keep on
taking shape into theinstallation “On Still Life”. Each element competes to outline a
sophisticated hypertext which bounces across different media, times and languages: the biological system and the industrial one, nature and culture, the wilderness and the serial, the identity and the stereotype, our world and its
representation interweave constantly showing a fundamental dualism. The fruit phenomenology and its particular evolution in relation to society throughout the
centuries, hints to a progressive artificiality of the natural/ancestral component,
ending itself, as a climax, into a globalized and disheartened reproductive
organism which risks to preserve its simulacrum only.
(Text by Veronica Caciolli, Project Wall, MART, Rovereto)
Latent Cartographies_9 Cartografie Latenti, performance; 2 actors were reading once a day for 18 minutes,
collection Fondazione MAXXI; 2014, Open Museum, Open City, MAXXI, Rome;
collection Fondazione MAXXI; 2014, Open Museum, Open City, MAXXI, Rome;
video: https://vimeo.com/121011130
“Latent Cartographies” is a project that has been developed for Narrazioni,
a performances cycle dedicated to storytelling, during the exhibition
Open Museum, Open City curated by Hou Hanru. The Flaminio district
-where MAXXI is located- is home to several building complexes that perfectly reflect a
twentieth century and contemporary aesthetic. The area was mainly redeveloped after the Second World War, and the Olympic Villageis one of its gems. The complex, in the purest rationalist style, can be seen as a symbol of the city’s desire to attain the new modernity of post-war development.Writings of Le Corbusier, Luigi Moretti,
Pier Luigi Nervi - the architects who inspired, imagined and built the Villaggio Olimpico
complex- intermingle with depositions of local inhabitants about their experience of
complex- intermingle with depositions of local inhabitants about their experience of
those architectures. The architects writings and the inhabitants depositions are
funneled in two different dialogs that overlap and alternate turning into a narrative map which questions the values of modernity, as well as of collective space and
the community.
The Artist’s Profession
(UP) 15 The Artist’s Profession, video HD (documentation), 18 minutes,
2012;
(DOWN) 16 The Artist’s Profession, installation; LCD Screen, video HD (documentation),
18 minutes; fresco; Incontri Internazionali d’Arte, Roma,
2012;
photo credits: Massimo Piersanti;
(UP) 15 The Artist’s Profession, video HD (documentation), 18 minutes,
2012;
(DOWN) 16 The Artist’s Profession, installation; LCD Screen, video HD (documentation),
18 minutes; fresco; Incontri Internazionali d’Arte, Roma,
2012;
photo credits: Massimo Piersanti;
video: https://vimeo.com/40090037
The Artist’s Profession addresses the complex issue of the artist’s craft and
the ambivalence with which works of art are greeted; some consider them
to be the ultimate expression of the human spirit and others as simply a commodity. Inspired by the physical location of Incontri Internazionali d’Arte in Rome – an archive and library – the intervention uses for its material some statements uttered
by different famous artists over the centuries, gathered in the library’s books.
The statements were chosen for their lyrical intensity and
their ability to express the artists’ thoughts about art and life. The performance consists of several parts: two performers read the texts selected while a third
voice in the background reads quotations assigned to various artworks during auctions
at Sotheby’s andChristie’s.
(Marcello Smarrelli, The Artist’s Profession, Incontri Internazionali
d’Arte, Roma)
Sinfonie Sismiche_22-23 Sinfonie Sisimche-Taiwan symphony, Taipei Biennial,TFAM, Taiwan, 2012
24 Sinfonie Sisimche _Studio for music translation, Lorca Earthquake of 2011, 45 x 25 cm, cotton paper and ink, 2013
The symphonies proposed in the project have somewhat peculiar origins: they in
fact come to life from the translation of graphic tracks into a sound track. The graphic tracks in question are made up by copies of seismograms recorded during
some earthquakes that have taken place around the world. Seismograms
are translated into music by a sculpture instrument, half a seismograph
and half a barrel organ. The organ plays through holes practiced on paper.
Adapting the documents to the instrument score, holes have been drilled on the waves’ peaks. Translating the seismogram in the organ score, the larger the
amplitude of recorded waves, the more the seismogram covers the full tonal scale
played by the barrel organ.Seismic Symphonies is also a symbolic inversion:
the instrument of the organ is most commonly used in churches,and its
sounds are derived from the heavens and symbolize cosmic harmony. But
here it is the earth,“nature”, the ground beneath our feet that
is moving. It speaks to us not of harmony, but of our fragility, undermining
our fantasy of
and half a barrel organ. The organ plays through holes practiced on paper.
Adapting the documents to the instrument score, holes have been drilled on the waves’ peaks. Translating the seismogram in the organ score, the larger the
amplitude of recorded waves, the more the seismogram covers the full tonal scale
played by the barrel organ.Seismic Symphonies is also a symbolic inversion:
the instrument of the organ is most commonly used in churches,and its
sounds are derived from the heavens and symbolize cosmic harmony. But
here it is the earth,“nature”, the ground beneath our feet that
is moving. It speaks to us not of harmony, but of our fragility, undermining
our fantasy of
Apple Girl _18-19-20 Apple Girl, video frames, SD, 9 min, 2011;
In the video kings and queens in the Apple Girl story, transcribed by Calvino, have
been replaced by representatives of the contemporary bourgeois world. The fairy tale re-enactment tells us about a women - who can not have children until she is reconciled
with her natural side giving births to an apple – and about a man competing
with nature, obsessed by the desire to recreate what exist better then nature it-self. These two worlds get in contact and the “piece of fruit” born by the woman exceeds
with nature, obsessed by the desire to recreate what exist better then nature it-self. These two worlds get in contact and the “piece of fruit” born by the woman exceeds
the results of male ambitions. For the collector and his wife the apple becomes a “ natural echo”, that awakes impulses excluded by their social class behaviour.
