Interview with Giuditta R

q)Please tell us your name and where you practice.

a)My name is Giuditta R, I am Italian and I currently live and work between Copenhagen and Berlin

q) Why do you make art?

a)Because I always felt that was my reason for living

q) How do you work ?

a)My last series of artworks, started in 2008, is made of pencils and mixed techniques on cardboard. The drawings are generally created in a black white (pencils-support). Only little particulars are underlined, in each artwork, by evident and colored glitters, shiny pagliettes and little objects, emerging drastically from each representation. This choice gives a different, contemporary and original, way of looking at the artworks. A key of reading which brakes with the classic way of drawing.

q) What's your background?

a)I grow up in a family of artists, in the south of Italy.

I specialized in drawing in the last three years, even though I started to be confident with the pencils media since I was a child, spending many hours per day drawing.

I studied art in high school. I finished my artistic studies in 2008 in the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania, Italy, where I obtained the bachelor degree and master with First Class Honours.

In 2007-08, I had my first opportunity to visit Copenhagen. In facts through an exchange with my art Academy, I worked for some months on a realization of a virtual art project at Aalborg University (Ballerup department). Since then for me started a long research which is still ongoing today.

I experienced interesting possibilities of cooperation with Denmark and found many affinities with the northern culture. Actually my entire inspiration born since always from Expressionism and Nordic art in general. I noticed the great meaning that Copenhagen had for my creativity.

I moved out from Italy and started the production of a new long series of drawings, called “Drops of Madness”, which is still ongoing.

q) What role does the artist have in society?

a)Artist tells universal “truths”. An artist can became a "teacher" of life and experience.

Personally, my interest in exhibiting my work has its roots in the basic thoughts of the project to catch the deep-lying roots of the human identity and to put light on the weight of unconscious elements in the person we think to know so well – our selves.

The characters of my drawings are ghosts, creatures who provocatively invite us to ”dance” on deep-lying platforms, surrounded by psychological and cultural undertones.

They remind us about our inherited limitations, which difficulty we can amputate.

Therefore this project can also be seen as a reflection about the meaning of identity and self-consciousness in our contemporary, “anestethized”, society.

q) Did your practice change over time ?

a)Yes, it did. I have been trying several techniques (painting, photography, installation etc.) and been inspired by different experiences.

Nevertheless my actual inspiration has often came from the same sources.

q) What art do you most identify with ?

a)It's difficult to give a precise answer to that. It's because for me art is how I feel to communicate and express my own universe. I don't feel like comparing or identifying myself to something else.

q) What themes do you pursue ?

a)Overall self-consciousness , curiosity, paradox, dreams/nightmares, psychology, culture and so on. I love to represent everything through the portrait. It is, in my opinion, the book in which every human experience, feeling etc. is written.

q) Describe a real life experience that inspired you.

a)Walking and getting lost at night, in a city that I don't know.

q) What jobs have you done other than being an artist ?

a)Public Relations, delivery of newspaper and flyers...portraits to people!

q) What responses have you had to your work ?

a)Who had occasion to observe the peculiarities of my artworks is often thrilled by the untraditional details and by the expressive figures, together with the mysterious and glitter-blown atmosphere that ”sizzles” in the heavy graphite.

I have been showing my works in different cross-cultural contexts and been observing an interesting result hereof. More people have following expressed, that they have felt touched at deeper emotional levels. ”It was like if the works knew something about them”. “They recalled abstract memories and emotions from passed moments” etc.. The interesting thing about this reaction is, that my actual inspiration for my drawings, originates from personal issues and observations of people especially in my Italian everyday life and surroundings. That other people, even from different cultures, can feel touched from these problematics indicates that, underneath the different surfaces, we all hold the same humanities. This is why the drawings of the series ”Drops of Madness” communicate in a universal language.

q) What do you dislike about the artworld ?

a)I hate people who feel important, who have lost their sense of humanity and humility. The great focus on economic matters in general.

q) What research do you do ?

a)I guess a never ending research: Who am I and why?

q) What is your dream project?

a)To live with what I love, being myself.

q) What does “ copy” mean to you ?

a)To capture the inner soul of something.

q) What's your favorite cuss word ?

a)I'll make it!