Esmeralda Spada is an Italian artist born in 1973. After graduating at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna she started to focus on the natural aspect of the world. Nature then became the spectrum in which she dives in deep to create her artworks. Her oeuvres are exhibited in numerous public venues in Italy and are represented in private collections. The small size of the works allow them to become part of the living environment without being obtrusive, creating a new harmony with the preexisting ambience.
“Nature offers her the materials, and thanks to her dexterity tree fragments come back to life in works of art with harmonious shapes. With waste materials she reproduces the rhythm of Nature, creating works –in particular the one I purchased- with sinuous and feminine shapes. This feminine force is especially presents in the series of “Carnivore”. Wood is the chosen material, but the red color of passion shines through, and allusions to relationships finished in the shards of glass that compose it. I felt it was mine and bought it. It is a tribute to the genius of the artist for whom Art, Nature and feeling are never separated” – Annalisa Valgimigli, collector of Esmeralda Spada
In describing yourself as an artist you use two words: forgetfulness of living. What does it mean, and how do you translate it into your works of art?
Often when I walk I find myself looking at the ground, and in this doing I find myself observing parts of objects that almost take on the features of limbs, which in this new status become memories (signs) of the system of subliminal needs. At this stage I see them being absorbed by the soil, incorporated by plants, as if forgetting their social essence, but aware of their structural insertion into the living bodies of nature.
From here you draw inspiration for your works, which seem to be the result of a continuous cycle of creation and destruction of matter. Is this what you want to symbolize with the phrase “Mute of Art Space 0?”
From these observations are born the works that I have entitled Carnivore, objects thought of as mutants, where dismemberment is conceived as a necessary step in the life cycle, and where the object is a sign aimed at leaving no trace.
This is the “Mute of Art Space 0”. When I build my objects (which are the result of the observation of everything that the human has produced and that tangles with nature) I think in terms of life / death, more precisely, how the executive technique is in function of dismemberment. In this way I can reuse the same materials for another work.
It’s what I call “serviceable art.” Useful because it is based on the principle that the object has a value not only social (Jan Boudrillard) but also planetary. Our objects must be born with quality of recovery.
Your works are mostly small, why this choice?
Their dimension is of the present, neither too big nor too small. They are of such a magnitude that they can be transformed. I used -for all- a single broken glass of a French window.
