Beatrice Celli

Beatrice Celli (L’Aquila, 1992) works between Castelli and Marseille.

 

She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and Urbino, spent a study period at Villa Arson in Nice, and in 2019 was selected for École Offshore, a postgraduate program in Shanghai.

"I often envision my creations as part of an immersive and scenographic whole, where sculptures, performances, texts, and installations integrate humble and raw materials, traditional knowledge, or forgotten micro-histories.

My primary source of inspiration is the rural and mystical imagination of my native region, Abruzzo, in particular the legacy passed down by the women in my family, but more generally I am inspired by any kind of supernatural experience related to the perception of hidden and invisible forces.

I see the recovery of local particularities not as a form of retreat into the self but as the possibility to create a layered and multiple perception of things, in space as in time, where the works become portals to other, normally inaccessible and distant worlds.

The apotropaic and mnemonic dimensions go hand in hand, as in the imagines agentes*, encouraging storytelling, the unfolding of imagination, and the reactivation of childhood memories without any sense of proportion. In this invented folklore, where hybridizations and accumulations mix collective traditions and beliefs, the energy of spirits, invisible beings, and bizarre creatures emerges.

By stimulating an anthropological perspective, my creations reveal an animist, almost magical vision, as contemporary cult objects freed from any religious dogmatism. A syncretism is thus generated, in which the fantastic and the diabolical, the body and the spirit, vernacular art and fine art merge into my personal mythology."

 

*Rhetorical and mnemonic technique consisting in mentally constructing striking images in order to remember complex facts or concepts.