The beauty of Trasimeno's landscapes in Valentina Vannicola's photographs on display

The Laboratorio di Cultura Fotografica il Forno in Città della Pieve welcomes the exhibition Adorato Paesaggio, the new work of Valentina Vannicola (Tolfa, 1982), scheduled from July 9, 2022 to June 23, 2023. Adorato Paesaggio stems from the invitation that the Photographic Culture Laboratory of Città della Pieve extended to Valentina Vannicola to reason around the Pieve area through the practice of staged photography.

Her attention focused on the peculiar aesthetic of the Trasimeno landscape, praised especially since the Renaissance when for Perugino, Pinturicchio and their pupils the landscape is no longer just a simple backdrop for paintings, but becomes a real narrative element put in dialogue with the figures represented in them. This new interpretation of the landscape also begins to have an effect on its preservation: reclamation, agricultural cultivation, the construction of castles and towers; so much so that the real landscape comes closer and closer to that described by the painters. And it is precisely in this assumption that the peculiarity of this project moves: the oscillation between real landscape and represented landscape, between “recording and intention.”

In this context, another suggestion offered by the commission and grasped by the artist is inserted, namely the text of the young Pievan writer Samuele Perugino, of which Valentina Vannicola does not offer us a visual transposition, as has been the case with her other projects, but rather a reworking of its deeper meaning: the preservation of a planet by anthropomorphic beings. So it is here, amidst installations of plant elements and figures with Renaissance reminiscences, that the work of the author comes to life, who again enacts the typical dynamics of her artistic practice: the study and analysis of the territorial fabric, the relationship with the community and the involvement of the local inhabitants in the creation of a photographic narrative that passes through the staging of meticulous tableaux vivants.

Adorato Paesaggio intends to paraphrase in its title the “adorations” that are often the protagonists of paintings, but it also emphasizes adoration as an ecstatic gesture of contemplation in front of a view; in this context, the landscape is background and at the same time protagonist, container and content: a material and immaterial heritage to be preserved and on which to insert imaginative figures and golden installations that emphasize its sacredness to us.

Valentina Vannicola graduated with a thesis in Filmology fromLa Sapienza University in Rome and later graduated from the Roman School of Photography. Her artistic practice can be traced back to the genre of staged photography, a trend in contemporary photography that presents images constructed in a set as if they were real, according to the dynamics proper to cinematography. His work has been exhibited in several galleries and festivals including: MAXXI Museum, Rome; MAAT Museum, Lisbon; Rome; CLB Berlin with theItalian Cultural Institute (IIC), Berlin; Colegio Official de Arquitectos, Madrid; Casa do Design, Matosinhos; Centro Cultural de Justiça Federal, Rio del Janeiro; The Italian Cultural Institute Valletta, Malta; AuditoriumArte, Rome; theItalian Cultural Institute and the Head On Festival, Sydney; Festival Circulation(s), Paris; Italian Cultural Institute, Melbourne; Gallery Central, Perth, Australia; La Triennale, Milan; Palazzo Ducale, Genoa; Espace André Malraux Herblay, France; Vision Lab/Triennale di Milano at the Mediateca of S. Teresa, Milan; Arte Fiera Bologna; Vienna Fair; Bassano Fotografia; Il Bellaria Film Festival; Galleria Al Blu di Prussia, Naples; Galleria Wuderkammern, Rome; Urban Center, Rovereto; Mia Art Fair; CiternaFotografia-Festival; Fotografia Festival, Museo MACRO Testaccio, Rome; Centro italiano della fotografia d’autore, Bibbiena; Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome; s.t. Galleria, Rome. In 2011 he published with the publishing house Postcart L’Inferno di Dante, edited by Benedetta Cestelli Guidi, the work of the same name in 2021 entered the Photography Collections of the MAXXI Museum together with other of his works. His work has won several awards and has been published in multiple catalogs, newspapers and books.

For all information, you can visit Fotografia Città della Pieve.

The beauty of Trasimeno's landscapes in Valentina Vannicola's photographs on display

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