VISUAL ARTIST JOHANNA INVREA
I live and work in Italy, a place that I love very much despite its shadows. My artistic research has developed a lot around this territory, in 2017 I started the Surreal Italy project, a film about surreal and dreamlike, exotic Italy. Moreover, it is a film about rocky and natural landscapes, a Dantesque journey that begins in the caves and proceeds by layers, up to the heights and volcanoes; it is an exploration of space without humanity, as well as physical, it is a virtual and cerebral drift.
In apparent antithesis to the theme of the landscape my work focuses on the other hand on a marked interest in the human body. I started this investigation years ago, through self-portraits of my naked body far away in the landscape; over time, it seemed that the body approached its objective, until it became a dominant entity in today's work.
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
My favorite director is David Lynch his work has inspired some of my videos, especially in the beginning when I was experimenting with very dirty screen paste. In general I am interested in the current times; I am fascinated by darkness, that of caves and the aesthetics of Metal, but I am also very attracted to light, optimism, whatever that means…..
Tell us about your creative process
The projects I care about the most are the ones that are difficult to conclude. One that I have been conceiving now for years is The Armor, a wearable armor made entirely of ceramic material. The concept around which this work has developed is that of the heavy body, the heroic woman, a tribute to the Vikings, the Amazons, and mythological women.
The initial and still evolving idea is that it was both a human armor and a stand-alone sculpture, like an alien animal. A performance is linked to this work: I myself wear this very heavy diving suit walking slowly, with calm movements, it is a glorious, almost robotic gait.
What do you think of the art world today?
I see the world advancing with contempt of danger towards a submerged future, as far as art is concerned, I believe digital aesthetics is at its peak, with the advent of NFT we are facing the most extreme commercialization of art without content. I think we will return to beautiful drawings, to baroque sculpture, to painting without digitization, to the pixel-free amanuensis mastery.
Icons in your opinion?
The icons, in spite of myself, have become robots-from being an Instagram influencer like Lil Miquela with her 3 million followers or successful artists like the android Sophia who earned her first NFT from an artistic collaboration 688 thousand dollars, or the pop star Hatsune Miku, a hologram that even a man wanted to marry.
I'm not sure what to think, but I had a clear vision one day, I was in the winter forest and the inner experience brought me back to the Carboniferous, where everything was wild and I felt infinite happiness.
I do not demonize the contemporary era, it is part of a natural evolutionary process, after the Anthropocene there will probably be a period of terrestrial purification, like a Middle Ages of nature. I feel that the meaning of existence is increasingly blurred, but I believe it is a necessary passage for the history of humanity.
Photo credits
Collaboration with @yuuuuugong
Collaboration with @_vvxxii
Art direction @bysan.z
Photography @alygunawan
