Bio.
About Me
Hello, I’m Michela, a flower of this Earth! I love to create my art by reclaiming materials gathered from the environment and recycled from household use. I am passionate about experimentation; my artistic creations are in constant flux, just like nature itself! Critiquing the dynamics of the geological era we live in makes me a citizen of the world and allows me to raise awareness about concepts that seem distant, but are in fact closer than we think. Expressing art-historical ideas through the transformation of form, medium, and content makes me a tireless researcher and a soul passionate about the details of life.
My Art
Working with scraps and fragments, studying their origins. Crafting concepts and emotions by leveraging the forms that my chosen medium offers, thus giving it a second life. Conceiving of waste as a source of creativity, transforming it to convey that “the ugly can become beautiful.” My art is defined by constant experimentation and the transformation of the materials I work with. The primary inspiration for my artistic research is NATURE, which offers me the intuition for what I want to create. Art history becomes a travelling companion and a guide for my eyes. I specialize in creating works of art made from reclaimed and recycled anthropogenic materials. My work addresses themes such as consumerism, the renewal of classical decorative forms, and a personal interpretation of contemporary social dynamics. Mine is a silent, creative fight against pollution that I have been waging since 2016, and it continues with the goal of reducing the amount of waste in our environment. This reclamation work, while seemingly simple, requires TIME, PATIENCE, and DEDICATION. The collected materials are washed and sanitized, then patiently sorted by color and type before they are ready for artistic creation. Whatever the object, reclaimed or recycled, it becomes an act of protest, a revolutionary statement in an era overwhelmed by the rampant, unregulated consumption of products destined for a short life.
My Journey
After earning my Diploma in Design from the Liceo Artistico (Art High School) in Taranto in 2016, I decided to enroll in the Decoration program at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lecce. From my very first year, I began my personal research, favoring plastic polymers as my material of choice and combining these early experiments with the knowledge I had already acquired. I earned my bachelor’s degree in 2019 and my master’s degree in 2022. Upon completing my studies, the need to forge a distinct artistic identity began to grow tumultuously within me. I didn’t just want to stand out on a personal level; I also wanted this identity to embrace a specific, collective-like goal. The choice to identify as THE MOLECULE came from an evolutionary process within myself, from my research into and fascination with an undervalued material, one primarily used to produce objects that will become waste or are destined for planned obsolescence. Plastics are artificially synthesized organic materials of high molecular weight, defined by IUPAC as: “polymeric materials that may contain other substances to improve properties or reduce costs.” The most common polymers are synthetic, derived from petroleum. Plastic is light and cheap; it was born in the last century and immediately became irreplaceable. It is easy to work with and offers simple, effective solutions, but it must be used well and, above all, disposed of and recycled correctly to prevent serious environmental damage. THE MOLECULE is inspired by the visual representation of the metal-porphyrin chemical compound extracted from petroleum. Porphyrin is also found in our bodies, and the connection between ourselves and this mixture arose spontaneously from the similarity with elements present in nature, as well as within us. Everything we touch is made of molecules and atoms. We ourselves are the sum of many molecules that form our being. Molecules are the smallest parts of matter that always retain their PROPERTIES!
MANIFESTO
The motivation driving this artistic research is a protest against the current geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which human activities have managed to impact delicate geological processes through territorial, structural, and climatic changes.
The project’s aims are:
- To speak out, using the language of art, against the improper use of anthropogenic materials in daily life, which have become one of the world’s biggest pollutants. To highlight how this is our problem and how being indifferent doesn’t change things but makes us complicit in a disaster; at the same time, this awareness empowers us to change.
- To raise awareness about plastic materials.
- To stimulate the senses visually, revealing waste and single-use products through a new aesthetic concept.
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Reclaim.
THE MOLECULE seeks to oppose the dominant mode of art-making, in which artists create while the public plays the passive role of observer or consumer. In an era where the human-nature relationship has almost completely vanished, this kind of artistic work allows not only for interactivity with an undervalued material (conceived of as waste) but also for the chance to reconnect with our planet: OUR ONLY HOME.