Talent of the Year 2020 - NOMINEE: Chiara Arturo

I don't know Gandria, I've never been there. I am struck by his stone, it’s statuesque. I find - after weeks of looking at vintage postcards and photographs sent to me by C. - a stone that looks like the stone of Gandria. I photograph it in still-life, I want to emphasize and evoke the insularity it manifests. The stone of Gandria is a stone that protects, solid and fragile at the same time, a stone to be defended. Dream and nightmare, it seems suspended over the abyss (close there the lake reaches its maximum depth). Behind the stone is Gandria, I cannot see it. Think of a place never seen before, think about its shape. The stone represents the island, the mystery, the limit of the visible or the way to access what I cannot know. Seven photos, because seven is the number of completeness and the island is always enough for itself. And several exercises to get to see it.

I found images of Gandria online, in all of them there is water, whether they are images taken from the lake or from the mainland. Water is the only element I recognize: I cut out the water, I isolate it. It reminds me how the color of the sea changes depending on the wind.

I join the visions, partial. The island "becomes a possibility of exchange, a form of relationship”. And I’m a node.

“None of this made sense, flying three times a week at noon over Xiros. Everything was distorted in the useless and recurring vision; except, perhaps, the desire to repeat it, the consultation of the clock before noon, the brief, sharp contact with the blinding white fringe at the edge of an almost black blue, and the houses where the fishermen would have just raised their eyes to follow the passage of that other unreality. […] Once he took a picture of Xiros but he found it out of focus ”. (Julio Cortazar, The island at noon)

"Imagine yourself as an island" is the result of an artist residence made impossible by the Covid-19 pandemic: an opportunity to think a place I never seen before and 900 km away from me.

About author:
I was born in Ischia (NA, Italy) in 1984.
During my study at Magistral Degree Course in Architecture I used photography as a means of expression, cultivating a lively interest in landscape and space. Furthermore, I attended visual art workshops and participated in several collective exhibitions. I graduated with honors with a final thesis in Landscape Urbanism on environmental contamination in Campania. In 2012 I was selected for LAB, a masterclass in personal research headed by Antonio Biasiucci in Naples. Between 2014 and 2015 I exhibited with LAB at Castel dell’Ovo (NA), at Festival Internazionale di Fotografia of Rome and at SI Fest of Savignano sul Rubicone (FC), with the collective exhibit - installation “Epifanie”. In 2015 the first solo exhibition with the work 18 miles at Eloart Gallery (Ischia, NA). In 2016 I was selected for the Imago Mundi Collection and I participated as visual artist at Live Artena. In 2017 I exhibited with Imago Mundi at Spazio ZAC in Palermo and at Museo MADRE in Naples; I was selected as one of the authors of Festival of contemporary photography in Gonzaga (Mantova) and I was invited to participate at BoCS - artistic residence in Cosenza. At the beginning of 2018 I started a collective project on the Mediterranean as a place of crossing with Cristina Cusani, a project that will evolve in 2019 with the participation of many other artists. In 2018 I was select for a social campaign for Leica Camera Italia and I make an artist book with Ilfilodipartenope publishing house. In 2019 I am selected for The Photo Solstice #2, Falìa AIR and MACRO Asilo AIR. At the end of 2019 I moved to Tuscany.

Lens-based, I work with mixed media, multimedia and installation.
My personal research is focused on water and an idea of island, on the landscape and space perception, the archiving of memories, the way the perception and archiving influence the imaginary construction. Starting from an introspective investigation with a cartographic method, I focus on geographies of thought, traces, journeys, visions, wounds and inner landscape. I explore themes and conditions of life such as the transit and the standstill of the individual, the surface and the distance, the grandeur of material landscapes and their fragility. I work for many years on the same theme, I dig into landscape as I dig into myself, in the same way and for the same reasons. I try to map and fix it to build an archipelago of my certainties. For some of my work there are site-specific installations studies: a way to cross my work in the time dimension.