Alessandra Risi

Phytocentrism

During this year I have been developing a series of paintings about the green kingdom, with the intention of giving back the value to nature which often goes unnoticed. Since the residence in Menorca I reflect myself through island bodies, roots, plants and body. I began to realize my position as a Latin American woman with European ancestors, back again in Europe (Raiz).

Since I get back in Lima, I start investigated in my grandfather's Italian book collection “Regno Verde” by Rizzoli Frattelli Edittori (shipped from Italy to Peru), and my great grandparent stamp collection. I started noticing the similarity between the images and the paintings developed. I start thinking about the idea of islands and the connections under the sea as bodies, I play with the matchboxes like landscape images with are fragmented because of the warm temperature. Matchboxes as the idea to light up the memory. I show the plants as a reflection like human beings who were shipped from different continents in the colony. Iconographic symbols of each nation that together make up a whole. My recent exhibitions speaks as chapters such as “Cuerpo Salvaje”, “Paisaje Fragmentado” curated by Dulcina Abreu at The Mission at Vancouver, “Isla” curated by Fatima Pope at Ginsberg Lima, “Plantarvm” a double exhibition with Silvana Pestana, and the latest “Taxonomía Ornamental” curated by Carlos Zevallos. Every single viewers can look the paintings and get reflected as plants from different parts of the world.

During my process of investigation I connect in different ways into the places that surrounds me, In my recent trips I’ve been in islands, like Menorca for the residency, Vancouver for an exhibition, my home town with has an island beside and others. In some cases I recollect local plants to reproduce them in water. At the same time I try to search for new information such as books or encyclopedias, I use my grandparents old anagogic camera to capture plants as it shows in the botanical book says “With the arrival of photography, the importance of the illustrator declined; soon the botanist was no longer entering the field with”(1). I also try to visit art stores looking for different oil colors that in lima doest arrive. Generating new process of investigation makes the painting and the plants transmit new perspective with different tones depending of the light of each place.

I generate oil paintings in large formats, most of the larger formats are plants, fragments of roots and island landscapes, while in nano formats such as matchboxes or yarn boxes I represent fragmented landscapes that together make up the same landscape, playing with the idea if light the memory or a burned landscape. On the other hand I generate round paintings giving this idea of earth cycles and women fertility. In the paintings you can observe different situations in one side a figurative image such as a plant or object, and in the other hand there is a part of the painting that its left incompressible so the viewer can get free interpretation. Most of the paintings contain colors that are saturated especially red, accentuating the idea of climate warming and feminine red. By viewing the paintings you can se a quick and soft trace leading into this idea of nature and time. Today im continuing my investigation specially looking forward into the different fruits and vegetables that the plants produce and how they were shipped into different parts of the colonies. Im very interested in understand how a place can influence into plants like the climate, soil and even the plagues (flys). Changing the plants makes me remember how change is constant like in ourself in our ADN.

Investigating about plants in this year has been such an interesting way of discovering new perspectives. Understand the connection of island like bodies with connects under the water, Plants and roots a way to understand decolonization process and adaptations of the life. Plants that are shipped to different countries and reflecting into human migration. I also understand in a stronger way the climate problematic and the reactions. Traveling into different countries enriches my process like trying new formats and new pigments of oil colors. Traveling makes me adapt into new spaces and changing the material process, Meeting and working with new curators, artist and galleries. Showing my work makes me grow in different aspects by having the critics of different views with reflected is reflected in my work. I will continue searching for shows, projects, museums and new sources like books to develop a new path (Plagues and insects) of my investigation at Royal College Of Art.

Mediterranean Bite

Curated by Pietro Cattai

Queen Alexandra House

London Uk, 12th September - December 2024

"Alessandra Risi Castoldi explores the intricate relationship between identity, memory, and nature through the vivid colours of her oils. Her exhibition "Mediterranean Bites” at the Queen Alexandra house references her Italian heritage and the fragmentary nature of her narrative. Alessandra presents a series of significant works marking her debut in London and on the eve of her entrance into the Royal College of Art".

Fragmented Landscape

For some time, the artist, Alessandra Risi has been collecting elements of expanded territories. Elements as tangible as her prominent collection of matches, now translated into fragmented paintings and canvases interpreting subtle memories from everyday life. For Fragmented Landscapes, the artist composed a symphony of velvety gray greens, sometimes opaque, dramatically juxtaposed against reddish soil or vibrant purples. Her tone for narrating holds a mysterious low tone, defined contrast, and cloudy atmosphere that could be easily identified from South American ecosystems, referencing the legacies of a specific South American school of landscape painting, and 20th-century Italian cinema.

With this collection of ten paintings, Risi fosters a platform for intimate conversations of post-isolation. During her recent residency in Mahon, Menorca, the artist contemplated questions about the self. The comparison of our internal red and the red distill of some of the aloes brought questions of observing our cosmology, as well as islands. In selecting pieces of different dimensions, the artist brings a comparative study of the cosmos and our relationship with a universe that has its own time and that we access through indigenous knowledge. Giving shape, as the artists mention “...to the idea of the cycles of women and, in turn, of the earth.” observing the painting and its interpretation as a universal fragmented cartography.

The Fragmented Landscapes collection encompasses two general themes: the exercise of memory keeping as resistance to forgetting and the documentation of plants and landscapes to investigate their source and our relationship with them. Some of the pieces starring this collection are connected under the family of Aloes, one in particular, Viola which is an interpretation of a Huitzquilitl. The plant originally named in Nahuatl, started to appear on the radar of the Western world through a series of illustrations commissioned for the Booklet of Medicinal Plants of the Indians, popularly known as the Badianus Manuscript, published in 1552. This Aloe Maculata was both exoticized by colonial powers for its mix-textured surfaces and later commercialized during a European epidemic, which used its agave to treat a nuanced emotional disorder loosely interpreted as “depression”. With pieces such as Viola, or Raices, the artist brings an undertone of Nostalgia, often referenced as a post-migration emotional reaction pre-depression. While propagating,

plants may experience emotional reactions to new soil and need their own particular time and care to assimilate to the conditions of the new weather.

For “Raices” the artist translated the image of a cutting with some of the roots already grown after a period of propagating. In both cases, the image and the title present an intention from the artist to delve into a larger conversation about belonging and expansion. The English translation of ‘Raices’ as ‘roots’ allows the public to start the conversation of multiple lines of belonging. Some of these plants, such as the Huitzquilitl or the White Begonia Maculata, are lately popularized by the digital lifestyle sector, and the plant seeds or roots are available for purchase through digital transactions and commercial global shipping.

Fragmented Landscapes in this case bring the opportunity to observe the ever-evolving conceptions of memory and the evocative gestures involved in re-claiming, altering, or constructing moments. Sometimes, touching gentle gestures of oniric visualities, as seen in ‘Pesadilla.’ Other times, it delves into the excruciating exercise of remembrance, as in the delicate multiples that ultimately formed ‘Sa Mesquida’ or ‘Islote.’ The multiples, belonging to the family of Aloes-Vera, with roots in Latin ‘veritas,’ are now entering the northern side of the continent. The temperature here could evoke memories of a similar ecosystem for both the artist and the South American diaspora, now establishing new roots in the Vancouver contemporary art scene.

-Dulcina Abreu

20th November - 15th December 2023

Addition Gallery Vancouver Canada

Alessandra Risi Castoldi

Phytocentrism

Mediterranean Bite

Fragmented Landscape

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