Erika Pellicci
Poetics Aesthetics Composition series
HIDDEN Bořivojova
19. 7. / 12. 9. 2022
Erika Pellicci trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and obtained a master’s degree in Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna in 2020. Winner of the Combat Art Tracker 2021 award, she currently continues her artistic career in Berlin. Her research focuses on the relationship between body and space through the performative experience as a testimony of reality. The main medium she uses is photography.
Qui sempre. Qui forse. Qui mai.
To the question “What is my place in the world?”, I attempt to answer with this collection of shots. In search of a location where I can feel at home, I have collected, over the past two ye- ars, moments when I have felt more or less close to the constantly shifting idea of origins. “Here always” will not necessarily be always, and “here never” could become a maybe.
The theme of existence shifts on a continuous axis between the rational and the irrational, while being characterized by the unrepeatability and precariousness of places, emotions, and situations. In the end, finding the right place does not so much depend on actual physical displacement, as much as it does on a mental journey.
What does poetics mean to you?
For me, poetry is a subtle tension in the air that you feel coming when the mental process of contemplation begins. It is a symbol, metaphor, wonder, suspension. It is the need to express yourself that burns inside you, that you cannot hold back, like when you feel you have to write a love letter. Poetry, for me, has many forms. I find it in dance, in a whisper, or in silence. Poetry is rhythm and pause. It is a juxtaposition of words. It is composition. It is aesthetics. It is a melody of images, of forms, of feelings that transport you to another place that is private and intimate.
What does aesthetics mean to you?
Aesthetics, for me, means making choices. When you choose one element over another, you are making aesthetics. It, more or less, almost always happens in an irrational but controlled way. Aesthetics is a kind of the Barthesian punctum. It's something that captures your attention, that provokes different sensations through the visual sense. This term is often linked to the pursuit of "beauty" and to the design of something, but every beauty is singular, so even a garbage bin can have its own aesthetic character. Everyone has, within them, their own aesthetic world in which coincidences and longings are mixed, and, there, the seed of aesthetics appears.
What does composition mean to you?
Composition is the ripe fruit of aesthetics. Composition, for me, is a set of lines that overlap and create forms that give meaning to a unique element. Having studied painting, I think stylistic patterns have trained me to see compositions everywhere around me.