Born in 1995 in Basilicata (Italy), based in Milan (Italy).
An industrial torch burning alone in a field, a flash of light behind a mountain, water that is nearly evanescent. Light becomes a hazy alterity, a foreign entity or a link between earthly secrets and celestial depths. Valeria Limongi's studies in astronomy shine through in the images she composes, science-fictional, almost dystopian. We navigate strangely familiar landscapes, between dusk and dawn, purplish greens and distortions of forgotten echoes.
Contemporary landscapes are irrevocably marked by human activity: intensive monocultures, heavy metal spills in water, habitat destruction... Growing extractivism impacts each geographical typology differently depending on its geological, political, economic and social specificities. These human marks are often invisible to our eyes, accustomed to these imperceptible changes. Valeria Limongi highlights these traces through her visual and photographic practice. As through a perceptive prism, she reveals what lurks beneath the layers of reality, in the space between the present and the perceived. This suspended moment, at the edge of a dream, the edge of the woods, the edge of the night.
Written by Andrea Malapert.
A well-known saying describes as an idiot anyone who looks at the finger instead of marveling at the moon pointed out by the wise man. But is it really so foolish to examine that outstretched finger, and thus question the position – valued and often privileged – of the one who points the way, who holds authority? In a world rife with ideological tensions, information manipulation, and increasing technological mediation, isn't it healthy to take into account the entire system of knowledge production and dissemination? Not to be blinded by the seductive brilliance of the moon, but to question the motivations of those who guide our gaze?
The three artists brought together for this residency, Sabine Fischer (DE/IS), Valeria Limongi (IT), and Javier Gonzalez Pesce (CH), share this interest in the tools – technical, scientific, spiritual, and ideological – that shape our vision and our coexistence. They dissect how humans create meaning and place great importance on the role that sensations and experiences play in these processes of knowledge and understanding of the self and the world.
Written by Isabelle Henrion.
What can be found in the shadows? Perhaps that forgotten part of ourselves. That is what the artist Valeria Limongi sought to discover during her residency. She photographs her surroundings in order to question our perception of them. She reproduces in images the state of derealization she has already experienced, the space between what is there and what is perceived. She reveals a new dimension of reality that had previously been hidden, with all its frightening and fascinating aspects.
Using the technical tricks offered by the camera, she constructs images that lie somewhere between dream and reality, whose apparent gentleness ultimately produces a disturbing strangeness. Like a siren whose song draws us underwater, the artist plunges us into the heart of fleeting reflections that are both enchanting and uncanny. It is this ambiguity that she probes and reveals: that which is revealed in photographs printed and disassembled into several layers, like moving scenery. Or that of Polaroid shots, where the artifice of a filter placed on the camera brings out distant otherness.
Through her work, Valeria Limongi asks us: don't we all feel like strangers to our surroundings? And aren't we comfortable underwater?
Written by Andrea Malapert.