Silvia Beltrami | Vanishing Points | interview by Annalisa D’Amelio

Only after some time from her last exhibition Vanishing points, here in Milan, I had the chance and the pleasure to meet Silvia Beltrami. Her work had, at that time already, touched me somehow, but I had not yet had the opportunity to deepen her artistic research.

Specifically, there is an explicit description and interpretation by the artist of feeling the world, her world in a global and generational perspective line: our time, or perhaps not having time anymore.

Or better to say, not having THE time anymore. Beltrami represents a split of life through a multifaceted and wild combination of cards, which become indicators of the deafening and cacophonic rush of our society, with its varied points of view and possible escape points: it is, probably, a mirror that represents us.

We tend to build and determine ourselves’ identity through what appears and the rush of the message to be enjoyed. As Baudrillard says,

“we have no more time left to look for an identity in the archives, a memory in the past and, in no way, in perspective, in the future. We need an instant memory, an immediate setting, a sort of advertising identity ready to occur and expire, in an instant”

The instant, which determines the fragmentation of our era.

Silvia Beltrami‘s reality is a selection process that suggests unreleased associations thanks to fragments and images that build new stories.

Individual and collective stories in a great explosion of paper and images taken from newspapers that cover our everyday life and represent our lives, our fields of interest, our only and ephemeral looking through a space and at such a fast time to be sometimes evanescent. Beltrami reports on his work plan, a concept of “new world”.

During our meeting, I asked her a few questions.

Vanishing points, why?

Since it represents the point of view of the project, the perspective and the concept of escape from reality.

Is art for you a way to escape?

Yes, art for me is escape. It helps me to think about our contemporary reality. That is why I am interested in generational changes that are the mirror of our society and of the new generations. Also because young people, from what I see, are looking for an identity consolidation. At present, our society is fragmentary and without identity and with many points of view. I use the image’s pieces to make up space. In vanishing points I used different perspectives with different escape points.

Is collage a new technique for you or is it the method you have always used?

No, collage has always been in my interests. Even when I graduated from Accademia di Belle Arti of Brera I presented and discussed a thesis about collage. And it is always the language with which I express myself better. My interest and my research have also had women’s condition as subject.

Why?

For what it is happening in Italy and I do not understand if it depends more on an emancipation or a regression. What moved my research about explosions was an episode of my life in particular. After watching a movie by Antonioni, Zabriskie Point. Especially in the final scene, where there was an explosion of consumerism and our fragmentary identity. Wherever you go, you carry your world and your dynamics with you.

Where do you get your pieces to compose the collage?

Magazines.

Where does your passion for collages come from?

The joy of finding the ideal piece. This does not mean making a puzzle, but composing my idea! The important thing is, though, that it expresses dynamism and life.

I dedicate to the artist and to all of you the final scene of a movie that surely deserves to be seen.

(Translated by Elisa Bonzi)