Tamara Ferioli: VITA

The title Vita derives from the homophony and homography of the Icelandic verb that signifies knowing, and the Italian term. Nature’s spontaneous architecture and transforming landscapes are expressed through a union of elements that permeate all the works on display. Through a formal content-based journey, Ferioli explores natura sapiens as if it were an unknown territory, all-encompassing and extreme, propagating the cyclical time of existence into a cosmic and magmatic flow.
Mimicry, conservation, proliferation, survival and regeneration are the themes that the drawings use to outline ethereal bonds, cancelling out any taxonomic hierarchy. Animal and vegetable transmute into alchemical compositions, contributing to the unveiling of a terrestrial dynamism, rich in mysterious life-sustaining breath.
In the exhibition, a new body of work, that takes advantage of the drawing using pencils, hair and applied paper, discovers - almost instinctively - another ephemeral yet vibratile dimensionality. The path is associated with the overlapping of levels that create passages of perception in recalling a new metaphysical perspective. Ferioli, inspired by the scientific design of nature, appears to describe an itinerary of migration from an atlas to a panicked evocation in response to an impelling dreamlike call. The white embraces basaltic columns, vegetal germinations, flowers, fish and crustaceans in the constant reminiscence of Icelandic, Atlantic and volcanic iconography. The exhibition concludes with an environmental installation composed of sculptures forged from the bones of Atlantic fish. Ferioli works with materials of animal origin, remnants from the processing of seafood, giving them a vegetal form. The flowers, which grow almost spontaneously, respect the exact interlocking structure in the sculptural process that the organic material offers, taking advantage of anatomical cavities and protrusions. The outcome of the sculptures reaffirms the deep and metaphysical wisdom inherent in nature, which the artist investigates in her patient and meticulous undertaking. Each flower is thus a fossil that, in plastic forms, crystallises the serial geometries and mathematical principles underlying the biological systems.

Tamara Ferioli was born in 1982 in Legnano (Milan). She lives and works in Milan. After studying at the School of Fine Arts in Lyon, she graduated from the Department of Painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. Tamara has exhibited her works in various museums and private galleries in Italy and Europe, including Padiglione Italia (Milan EXPO 2015); Palazzo Barbarigo Minotto, Venice (56th Venice Biennale); Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan; Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato; MAMbo, Bologna; State Institute for Culture, Sofia; the Civic Aquarium of Milan; CCCB - Centre de Cultura Contemporánia, Barcelona; Casa Testori, Novate Milanese; Palazzo Reale, Milan; Reggia di Venaria Reale; Triennale di Milano. In 2009, she was a finalist for the X Premio Cairo and the Terna Prize. In 2015, Tamara was in residence at La Napoule Art Foundation and in 2013 at SIM - Samband Islenskra Myndlistarmanna, in Reykjavik, Iceland.