Interview: Cinzia Inglese
Luca Curci talks with Cinzia Inglese during BARCELONA CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2021 – 1st EDITION, held in Barcelona, at Valid World Hall Gallery and during FRAGMENTED IDENTITIES, second appointment of BORDERS ART FAIR 2021, at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello.

Originally from Salento (born in Casarano in 1973 and raised in Bitetto, “City of the Olive Termite”), painter, performer of pizzica and scholar of her origins, rooted in a dark and primordial relationship with life and with the most mysterious forces of human nature. Her artistic career stems from the figurative, with the use of oil and watercolor painting techniques and is experienced for many years as an intimate and private research, which then gradually leads her to acrylic and the use of sand, stones, plaster, glues, paper, recycled materials and objects used first in their ordinary use and then giving a symbolically new and permanent life, finally resin and pigments. Only recently she decided to share her art, sometimes representative of this elsewhere, sometimes of an intimate and dreamy or still strongly symbolic reflection, in which one finds the sensitivity for great environmental themes, the memory of a great journey, one moment.

Luca Curci – What are you currently working on?
Cinzia Inglese – I’m currently working on a few new artworks in which, as per the ones exposed in this exhibition, I used some objects from the daily life together with some others that have an important symbolic meaning to me. More specifically, in the new works I’m also concentrating on some physical elements that are able to generate an “interactive” and “provocative” connection with the observer; all of which is integrated into the universal and evocative thought of the necessity of making conscious choices and how they can radically change the future of our mere existence.

LC – What’s your background? What is the experience that has influenced your work the most?
CI – I don’t recall a specific experience, but if art is knowledge and growth, I think that it was born with me and it has always been inside me since the beginning. As a child I used to be very curious of the different forms of expression, from dance to music, from writing to drawing. I was fascinated by the nature of my homeland for its colors and mood.Growing up art just stays there, it becomes the way I live and see the world through the many trips and returns, it’s the introspection that takes my thoughts to further boundaries, it is the Salentine Pizzica that keeps me grounded to the center of the Earth.How long will “The peaches dish” (Il piatto di pesche) of Ambrogio Figino, my first oil work done in a workshop a few years ago now, be able to give a new value to my memory, allowing me to retrieve what I had secretly been guarding for a long time: my desire to paint. From there I started a new journey that has taken me from oil paint, from figurative, from watercolor to a new path into developing an ever more personal vision of the representation, through the employment of acrylics, resins, pigments, objects, always functional to the personal insights that I freely want to evoke and express in my works.

LC – Where do you find your inspiration?
CI – Sometimes inspiration is the result of a sudden intuition, more often of a moment of intimate thought, through a long and complex trail. With my artworks I try to make room for the strength and the color of the thought in its various forms, I would like to evoke in the observer an insight about our times, about beauty, and about the love for the Earth that represents the subtle bright wire that ties together many works of the latest period.

LC – What is your creative process like?
CI – To me white canvas always represents a rebirth, a “zero-point” from which to start with great energy and fully aware of the infinite possibilities, which is why my first brushstroke is lie the beginning of a new journey, in which I dive with a strong desire for discovery. I start from a very clear and elaborated conceptual idea but never concretely envisioned, it is a path that fulfills itself along the way within the pictorial act, while the colors dominate my expressive quest since the beginning.

LC – How is being an artist nowadays?
CI – Being an artist nowadays is more than offering a personal, mindful, sensitive and provocatory reading of the surrounding reality as well as the intimist and oneiric one, and at the same time stimulating the observer to imagine an “after”. Nowadays the relationship that is established with the observer cannot be separated from some aspects that are way different from the past, from the personal branding to the commitment to social media and the digital world; it is a challenge that the artist cannot easily face alone.

LC – What is the message linked to the artwork you have shown in this exhibition? How is it connected to the theme of the entire festival?
CI – The works displayed in this exhibit are indirectly linked to the theme “Future landscape” of the exhibition, as representative of the fragile balance of our Mother Earth.The Land of our past and the value of memory which is precious and cannot be erased, of our roots and colors, the land of travel to distant places that allows us to discover the richness of diversity, the unknown of that elsewhere in the mind that draws us to the unexplored, the Earth that always brings us back to our essence and to the awareness of its fragility, in a message of provocation behind which lies a great hope and the hope of a mindfulness that is transformed into action, that can still change the future landscapes.

LC – We were attracted by your last artistic production, has the artwork presented been created for the festival or as a part of preexisting works?
CI – The artworks exhibited in this show are part of preexisting works, resulted from a research begun some months ago.

LC – What do you think about ITSLIQUID Platform?
CI – I think that the ITSLIQUID Platform is a great showcase for artist from all over the world.

LC – Do you think ITSLIQUID GROUP can represent an opportunity for artists?
CI – Yes, I think it is a great opportunity both for the exhibitions in the international market and for those organized in Italy. Also, the locations where the exhibitions take place are amazing.

LC – What are your suggestions about our services? Is there something more we can provide to artists?
CI – Personally, I was very satisfied with the service offered and I have no suggestions to make in this regard.