Beatrice
Celli
My practice is embodied in an eclectic set of works characterized by a wide variety of gestures, ranging from spontaneity to impulsiveness, from care to ritual.
I often imagine my creations as a scenic and immersive whole where sculptures, performances, texts and installations integrate modest and raw materials, traditional know-how or forgotten micro-stories.
My main source of inspiration is the rural and mystical imagery of my native region, Abruzzo, in particular the heritage transmitted by the women of my family, but I am generally inspired by any type of supernatural experience linked to the perception occult and invisible forces.
I see the recovery of local particularities not as a sign of withdrawal but as the possibility of creating a multiple and stratified perception of things, in space as in time, in which the works singularly become portals towards inaccessible and distant worlds.
The apotropaic and mnemonic dimensions go hand in hand, like imagines agentes*, favoring narration, the deployment of the imagination, the reactivation of childhood memories without any sense of proportion. In this invented folklore, where hybridizations and accumulation mix traditions and collective beliefs, the energy of geniuses, invisible spirits and bizarre creatures manifests itself.
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Stimulating an anthropological perspective, my creations reveal an animist, almost magical vision, like contemporary objects of worship freed from any religious dogmatism. They thus generate a syncretism in which the fantastic and the diabolical, the body and the spirit, vernacular art and the fine arts come together in my personal mythology.
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*Rhetorical and mnemonic technique consisting of mentally constructing images that strike the imagination to remember facts or complex concepts.