Hello hello!
I hope this newsletter finds you well.
I feel very hopeless and powerless these days. I scroll for hours trying to stay informed while the US just voted no to a ceasefire to ensure humanitarian aid access to Gaza and Italy didn’t bother to vote. Literally, none of the politicians I ever voted for in these two countries are raising their voices and openly standing for peace. I find myself thinking that the only power I’m left with to say “not in my name” is to never vote ever again. Super sad, but what do you do when your governments support the bombing of innocent children with white phosphorous and use your tax money to fund it? This is all I can think about these days. And maybe that’s why I finally took the time to write this newsletter, to think about something else for a couple of hours.
Let me share some good news. In my latest newsletter, I wrote about the inauguration of an art show I was part of - EX Illustri, an exhibition in memory of amazing Italian illustrator Elena Xausa.
100 artists were invited to celebrate Elena with original artwork inspired by her creative energy. All the art pieces were on sale to raise money for AIRC - Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (Italian Association for Cancer Research). I handmade this rug that is based on one of my fav illustrations of Elena, with a little watermelon addition.
The opening was super crowded, people had to wait in line to get in, and the exhibition was visited by tons of people over 3 months. A lot of artwork was sold, mine included, and €10,345 was successfully donated to cancer research! In the meantime, the art community joined forces again and helped Lorenzo Fonda, Elena’s husband, fund “Pigrotto”, a sculpture in her memory. If you ever happen to be visiting the Italian town Marostica, near Venice, you should totally check out Pigrotto: a lovely creature - who reminds me of Falkor from The Neverending Story - sleeping at the feet of a medieval castle surrounded by trees and nature.
In the past few months, I’ve been super busy with personal stuff like…buying a house with my bf. I’ve been debating with myself whether I should post about the whole journey and the renovation process on social media or not. I did a bit and it made me happy so maybe I should share more of my life instead of being always so self-conscious. The coolest thing about the new house is that we finally have a basement to work on our art project. No more making rugs and ceramic on the kitchen table, yay!
I’ve also been very into educational programs, either as a curator, mentor, or teacher/speaker. Just a couple of weeks ago I took part in an educational program for schools promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture and was invited to talk to the students about my work as a director and, also, about the gender gap in the audiovisual industry. The funny part is that I accepted without even asking if I was going to get paid for my time, then they spontaneously announced I was going to get paid and, in the end, they never sent me the money LOL! The irony of being a female director getting asked to talk about the gender pay gap in the industry and ending up not getting paid for it, after they told you there is a ministerial budget for it! At some point you can only laugh about it and start making rugs in your basement, I guess!
Besides not getting paid for initiatives against women not getting paid, I’ve been making animations, working on a couple of cool projects that I will share once they are ready, and plotting a new business venture for next year! Also, Twerkumentary is ready to be released but it feels like the worst time ever to promote it, so idk.
Oh, I almost forgot. I haven’t put my hands on it yet but a book that features my work came out. It’s called Nomumento (“non-ument”) and it’s written by Aesthetics professor Andrea Pinotti. In 2020, I “erased” with Augmented Reality the statue of Indro Montanelli - a famous Italian journalist who also casually bought as his “wife” a 12-year-old Eritrean child while he was a volunteer, with the colonial fascists, in the 1935 Italo-Ethiopian war - and, using image recognition and tracking technology, I replaced it with a new monument I created called “Monument to the Present”. My Augmented Reality artwork is cited in this new academic book that
proposes an aesthetic and political reflection on contemporary monumental art and the contradiction that besets it: denying the monument, in order to reaffirm it, and making the “non-ument”.
I’m curious to read it.
My next newsletter will be sent at random, like this one.
Much love Spaghetto.
It honestly always feels weird to know we lived in the same city for years but not managed to hang out. Brings me back to the good ol 2010s when people kept on telling me “Do you know Diana? She’s Italian too!” Ahah