RotaGiorgino’s In Conversation with... series continues with Italian artist Tamara Repetto
Tamara Repetto at work – Photography by AnnaMaria La Mastra
Tamara Repetto is a “multi-form” artist who sees nature as her creative laboratory. Originally from Genoa, Italy, she now lives between Voltaggio and Luxembourg
RG: What inspires Tamara Repetto?
TR: Nature has always been fundamental for human life and today it imposes itself urging us to reflect on environmental disasters, the relationship between nature and culture, the future of the landscape and frontiers of bio-law. It is impossible not to realise that nature is the protagonist of contemporary culture, hence my need to say it.
This storytelling takes place through the combination of art and technology; for me a suitable practice to get to a dialogue with nature allowing me to bring out from mutism the most vital and enigmatic part of the macrocosm-microcosm and therefore becoming a media to deepen further.
Nature, and its many figurative representation, was in the Renaissance the ground of convergence between art and science, as the Vitruvian man reminds us.
In addition to this, the use of technology is fundamental for the olfactory experience which, due to its invisible size, is scarcely manageable through the usual and visual tools of design.
To make the invisible considerable, it is necessary to invent other media, formulas, new expressive languages, make it visible, otherwise oblivion would be the penalty.
“Anosmia”, 2012 – Sound-olfactory multi sensorial installation made of plexiglas, glass sticks, fans, diffusers of olfactory essences, cable, sensor
RG: What is a unique and original aspect of your work?
TR: The most original aspect of my work I think is related to the use of the senses.
The virtual aspect of our society creates the risk of “sensory anaesthesia” in which we let life slip on us and we are no longer able to grasp aspects of greatest value and interest, causing us physical and mental problems.
It is necessary to rediscover ourselves through the senses, to fight the risk of anaesthesia.
Therefore I pick smells, sounds, kinetic energies, to inhabit my works, which I wish could become “informers of the soul”, exploration tools, to guide us back to ourselves.
In particular, my artistic research pays attention to the world of smells because the cognitive uniqueness of this sense has always sparked a great intellectual fascination in me.
Its extraordinary evocative power, semiotic efficacy, plasticity to the influences of the environment, the biological singularity, the apparent inconsideration to language, its being on the border between tangible and intangible, material and immaterial, physical and abstract, these elements make smell the most mysterious sense.
A detail of “Tableuax parfumés”, 2017/2018 – White with branches and feathers, soap, wood dust and soil
RG: Who do you think of when you hear the word Art?
TR: I think of an artist with intellectual honesty.
RG: What is the worst mistake an artist could make?
TR: Think about the audience.
You don’t have to think about the public when you work, this implies a continuous dialogue with the spectators, whilst I believe that the best way to communicate is by working for yourself only, to find coherence within yourself and then offer it to others.
The more the artist’s approach is personal, the more this allows him to communicate with others.
Sound panel “Nine minutes forty-two seconds”, 2010 – recuperated aluminum, wood, speaker, cable, DVD player, amplifier
RG: What are your favourite materials in your artistic research?
TR: The meaning of a work of art is found and constructed in the physicality of the materials.
I love to mix materials with different “temperatures”, to create particular interactions and experiences.
Wood that interacts with glass, marble that meets plexiglas, soap that incorporates natural elements, iron that touches a feather and so on…
Detail of sound panel “Nine minutes, forty-two seconds”, 2010
If you would like to know more about Tamara Repetto, please see the links below:
© RotaGiorgino – Interior Designers and Architects in London – Luxembourg – Milan
