Luca Curci talks with Maria Carpino during CONSCIOUSNESS, second appointment of ANIMA MUNDI 2024 which took place in Venice, at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello.

Maria Carpino was born in Rome in 1974. The artist is a psychotherapist and a group analyst. She has a great personal and professional passion for the treatment of people suffering from serious mental illnesses, in which she has specialized. In 2006, it was precisely in her field of clinical work that she took her first steps inartistic experimentation. In 2015 she encountered African culture and its landscapes and from here the artist’s first drawings were born with the scribbling technique, and the origin of that path which, previously deviating from the primordial furrow of humanity, today meets art. In 2023, after meeting the master Gerardo Lo Russo, Director of the Academy of Fine Arts, in his atelier, the artist worked in search of her sign, that primordial and original distinctive trait of Existence. The puntum of this work is a sign – the “Das Ding”. The “Thing” is being-there. It is vital and vivid energy and it is the Origin. It is the becoming of a breath and it is Art. Today the artist takes up the scribble technique and in her works appear to be searching for that face that we never outline in connoting it.

Luca Curci: What is your background?
Maria Carpino: Mine is a strange story, since I was a child I have always drawn and loved colours, but in reality I am a psychologist and group analyst and in my work I carry out both private clinical practice and I work in a psychiatric clinic taking care of patients suffering from serious pathologies such as schizophrenia, and for many years I have been carrying out art therapy group sessions with them, trying to integrate my two passions, in the idea that art is vital energy that is expressed through colours and this “energy” can become art and not a symptom of an illness and this for all of us!
Another funny thing happened recently that was like it assisted my whole story! I stopped smoking, I had been smoking all my life and a lot! And by magic I put a pen in my hand instead of a cigarette, I call it my “Cigarette-Pen” and I always draw with the pen in my hand wherever I am! I do many of my drawings on napkins in the places I happen to be in or even at the canteen in the clinic with colleagues. My graphic designer wants to kill me because he has to print from a napkin! And, of course, I always have my pad with me!

LC: What experience has most influenced your work?
MC: Some time ago I met Gerardo Lo Russo, he was director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome years ago. Our meetings were beautiful artistic chats that were truly important and generative of creativity in the clear understanding of directing all my vital energy into the creative act.
Gerardo accompanied me searching for my sign, a distinctive trait of every artist, and helped me approach again to the art of scribbling that I had undertaken years earlier after a trip to Africa. At a certain point, without realizing it, my drawings became imbued with all these suggestions.
Das Ding is the latest experimentation on the sign, it’s the last sign, it’s my sign! And after this experimentation came the doodles, drawn first after a trip to Africa and then taken up professionally in an art therapy group together with the patients in a psychoanalytic way.
My pen started to scribble and faces with eyes and mouths always arise from my unconscious, the outlining and connoting the face, that face, the other, mine!
I asked Gerardo a few days ago when I would no longer draw faces. He replied: “When you will no longer have faces in your mind!”.

LC: What topic are you working on?
MC: I have a project in mind. I would like to combine graphic art with book readings, words that draw and also music and dance. I was thinking of classical musical instruments such as a harp which bring back and lead to images of peaceful internal landscapes. I would like it to be a piece that has its own life and vitality and can restore these elements to the gaze while also involving other senses. Shortly, I don’t have clear ideas but let’s see how things turn out. Compared to my drawings, as Gerardo says, I wait for my unconscious to talk to me about something else, it’s a discovery for me too! Maybe I should ask my analyst!

LC: Where do you find your inspiration?
MC: My inspiration is all the emotions that pass through me, the life situations, the things that happen to me, everything that is inside me and that is outside of me and that animates me and is my vital energy, I put it on the paper, a pen always in hand, the ink as if it were “smoke” that comes out and frees creativity in expressing what my unconscious as well as the most conscious part of me puts into art!

LC: Has your style changed over the years?
MC: My style has changed and is changing!
At first I experimented with acrylic colour. After the contaminations with Gerardo I found myself working on the sign and using contrasts and the absence of colour more as well as the negative, and today I work with a ballpoint pen experimenting with other materials but I haven’t completely abandoned working with acrylic colours. I don’t know where I’m headed but I feel a change is happening that I can see in some of the latest works.

LC: How do you feel when you see your work completed?
MC: There is always a moment, the essence of a moment in which (I believe this happens to every artist, and it certainly happens to me!), While I’m painting and finishing a work, in that moment I say to myself: it’s over! I look and look at the painting I created and I feel “missing”, I say to myself: “what’s missing? What do I add?” And it is those final moments of those traits, of those “smudges”, that Other, that added sign, that ontological lack, which in the end I sign with my signature! This is what I think and I feel good and light!

LC: We were attracted by your latest artistic production, is the work presented part of pre-existing works?
MC: Das Ding, the work presented in Venice, as mentioned, is the point of arrival, the last work of an experiment I carried out on the search for my sign, I drew many other signs, each different from the other, until I arrived at Das Ding.

LC: Do you agree with our vision of art, what do you think of the theme of the exhibition?
MC: I found myself very much in line with your vision of art and with the theme addressed at the exhibition. I think it can also unite and integrate my background, both my professional side and my artistic soul, as representing consciousness through art is what for me art represents! Really beautiful!

LC: Do you think itsliquid can represent an opportunity for artists?
MC: I certainly found a dynamic and welcoming environment of professional artists willing to connect and network with each other. I believe this is the beauty and essence of Itsliquid! The next day I found myself having breakfast with some artists I met at the exhibition and I am still in touch with some of them. I think this is the greatest strength of Itsliquid!

LC: Did you enjoy collaborating with us?
MC: I really liked it, I’ll keep on being in touch with you for other experiences, as I found professionalism and availability! Thank you!