SYNAPSES
Serena Scapagnini - Photo Credits Filippo Silvestri
Italian visual srtist and art historian Serena Scapagnini’s latest work Hemispheres, is currently on display in the Pio Monte della Misericordia Church in Naples, Italy, alongside Caravaggio’s masterpiece The Seven Works of Mercy. So it was no surprise to us that she will be joining the Yale Quantum Institute for a year long residence.
We were lucky enough to ask her some questions, tracing her life forward to this incredible moment.
Tell us about your childhood
The nature of memories changes colour over time. So, had I been faced with this question at another time in my life, I think I would have told you some delicate story, to be re-elaborated, to be re-painted. Instead, today, as I sift through my childhood days in Italy, what shines through is mostly a sense of magic. The sense of a premonition. In fact, I found it indeed very interesting how my most significant artworks, that have unfolded over time, share an image, a premonition, among the episodes, real or imagined, of my childhood.
How did you become an artist? Can you talk about your creative process, a day in your life?
I mentioned the sense of premonition in the artwork, traceable to childhood.
In this sense, the artistic process is linked to an innate gaze, strongly intuitive, perhaps genetic (my grandmother, Laura Caravita di Sirignano, was an exceptional painter). Then, the years of training between Paris and New York were certainly a turning point in this journey, but I believe that art has mostly revealed itself in the silences—rustling and hypnotic—that form that perceptive bridge between the subject and the world.
I remember a particularly vivid episode from when I was a young girl at school.
I was listening to a lesson, swaying along with the professor’s words, grasping their meaning but largely neglecting the logic. In that protected hypnosis, I realized that my hands, often busy drawing according to a shared line of pre-existing images, had instead taken a new path. I began creating drawings whose rhythm, whose visual identity, was somehow foreign to my will but strongly determined to manifest themselves, in a form of autopoiesis that has never left my work.
Serena Scapagnini – Working on paper at her studio in Rome
To share some technical aspects, although the creation process is partially ineffable, I would say that in my most recent works, the paper is handmade in Fabriano, Italy, which is one of the most ancient and suitable places for this tradition. This allows me to participate in its peculiar chemistry. In my artworks, I incorporate organic and metallic elements like copper and colloidal gold to enhance the flexibility and luminescence of the medium. At the same time, my paper is highly adaptable for frameless installations and includes elements with a strong physical and symbolic impact.
I don’t have a rigid routine, but I do have a rhythm. I’m always working. I tend to be more creative at night, while I’m more methodical and meditative in the morning when I work at my studio in Rome. Here, I work on the paper with paint and later with inks, often with digital models, small sculptures, video artworks and architectonic installations. In my work, figures are executed very rapidly in China ink—spontaneous, often inspired by the lumps of paint or the vague stains left by the preparatory acid.
These images drift here and there like apparitions. Like jellyfish in the water, they are water within water. Just as neurons are in an ocean of thought.
What are some of the biggest challenges to live a life in a creative field?
I could mention various challenges. Regarding my artwork, I find that the greatest challenge is removing the superfluous, creating pieces that are mostly faithful to their own language and free from excessively self-referential lyricism. In short, not being selfish. Regarding the world, a personal form of reserve was challenging at the beginning. But the work, fortunately, has overturned every barrier!
Serena Scapagnini Studio, Rome Italy
What or who is your greatest inspiration? and what drives the passion behind your projects?
Inner research, combined with the rhythm and nuances of nature.
In this research, my greatest teachers have been artists, thinkers, and poets capable of bridging perspectives across different disciplines, with an exploration that is both scientific and spiritual. Hildegard of Bingen, Sri Aurobindo, Leonardo da Vinci.
Hemispheres #2 by Serena Scapagnini – Installation View at the Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples Italy. Mixed Media on paper, pasted on Plexiglas. 100 x 38 inches, 2013
What excites you about the future of art?
Interdisciplinarity.
In this sense, my participation in the residency program at the Yale Quantum Institute next fall is connected. It will be a year-long residency in the YQI laboratories, to produce quantum science-based artwork.
My focus will be the study of quantum physics and the sharing of the most subtle insights between science and art. A time for experimentation and the creation of new works on the Yale campus, in the USA.
Devotion by Serena Scapagnini – Installation View at Gallery Art Positive, New Delhi India. Mixed Media on paper, pasted on Plexiglas. Size Variable, 2014.
What excites you about future technology and its impact on our creativity?
And what worries you?
I dedicated 12 years to the study of the mind and the mechanisms of memory, in synergy with Prof. Higley, neuroscientist of the Yale School of Medicine, and the contribution of laboratory technology has been immense for my work.
The neurons’ profile, and the spines arranged upon the dendrites, with their mathematical proportion, have contributed to my research with inner visions.
Essentially, I’ve been impressed not only by the harmony of brain cell morphology, but also by their growth asymmetry and the visual identity between image and thought. Botanical and peculiarly human, a space of deep identity between art, science, and nature.
Recognizing the potential of tools for research in the field of neuroscience and the immense cognitive impact of technology and materials in the study of quantum physics, I believe I am not concerned about their outcome and impact on the sphere of creation: It's an act of sharing between the visible and the invisible, all stemming from consciousness itself.
Serena Scapagnini, Prof. Higley and F. Carle in front of one of the superconducting quantum devices of the Yale Quantum Institute laboratories in New Haven CT USA. Photo by Aniket Maiti.
If you could build a future society, what would it look like?
The highest form of Anarchy, founded on a deep sense of respect for the ecology of nature and the fair distribution of resources. I dream of an awakened and conscious society, and people a little less addicted to their screens.
Aether by Serena Scapagnini – Concept. 108 Elements. Mixed Media on paper. Size Variable.
What's the best advice you've ever been given and worst?
The worst and best advice I’ve received in the art field? Be serial.
Anelito by Serena Scapagnini Mixed Media on paper, pasted on Plexiglas. 85.8 x 20.3 inches, 2013
What motto do you live by?
Know yourself.
Watch SYNAPSES - The Space Between. Serena Scapagnini and Prof. Higley have been working in collaboration for the project, SYNAPSES since 2012.
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