Silvia Rigozzi
Silvia Rigozzi shares her study on life, death and what follows.
Hi! Welcome to The Casserole Series :)
SR: Hi! My name is Silvia. I was born and grew up in Milan and have lived and traveled in the US on and off for the past 13 years. I have a training in literature and linguistics but later choose to follow a path more suited to my inclination towards artistic expression. While getting my MA in Art Education at RISD three years ago I began my journey with clay, expanding from my other 2D practices of wood-cut printmaking and film photography. I am currently based in Milan, traveling to other cities to make and fire ceramics. The pandemic for me marked a more conscious commitment to art making and a reinforcement of the findings of my graduate school thesis on art as something that wants to be born through the artist. This renewed vow to art making, since clay wasn’t an option, has included writing, drawing, painting, and making inks and paper with dead plants and flowers.
The poem Jasmine is really striking. You wrote it during quarantine in Milan, Italy. Italy had much stricter regulations than the US. What is so beautiful about the poem is that it engages with all the senses so accurately and intimately. Something I missed while in quarantine was the freedom in experiencing the richness of the world through my senses.
SR: In a way quarantine didn’t change my lifestyle very much, other than I couldn’t go for walks. I kept doing what I usually do, with the comfort of knowing that it was the only thing I was supposed to be doing. It was a sort of long spiritual and creative retreat. I would write, read, draw, garden. There was a lot of listening to birds, tuning in to nature and contemplation of my plants. Of being with them and myself as Spring was approaching. The sweet smell of the jasmine flowers I have on my patio invited me to sit outside. Living in an urban setting it was a blessing to have an outdoor patio. The scent was constant, no matter where my mind wondered, at some point I would be yet again embraced by it and brought back to the calmness of the present moment.
I was very aware of atmospheric events and nature changes around me and welcomed them as kind gifts that came to visit me because I couldn’t go anywhere. The wind, the breeze, the sand from the Sahara Desert, the flooding of my patio, the warm sun, all brought intense sensory experiences that I cherished.
In this exercise I wanted to recreate a sense of getting lost in thoughts, representing the free flow of memories that have molded me together. It became a photo album of snapshots, a summary of my past, the way I see it, and that no one else knows.
The jasmine scent is a sort of portal that allows me to travel to other places in time and also leads me back. I am intrigued by identity as a sum of perceived eroded memories, so I wanted to draw a recollection as a self-portrait of my consciousness through the random surge of thoughts and emotions. An exercise in vulnerability.
You are a trained potter and expert gardener. The ink prints have a strong structure, almost like a photograph of a piece of pottery. How does your study of pottery and gardening speak to your other art practices.
SR: I am fascinated by the ephemeral and have a desire to prolong the existence of things. I am blown away by the beauty and delicate perfection of flowers and wish to save every inch of existence. What do things (and humans) have to say after they are beautiful and full of life? What richness and new beauty can they bring? This stays true in everything I do, whether it is composting, or gathering wild clay, or eventually making ceramic glazes with ashes of dead plants I am collecting.
This project was about trying to find out what the flowers had to say after their life as flowers. What was left unsaid in the beauty of their death and wilting? Their fleetingness is captured in the prints that draw vague figures that often resemble dancing humans or faces. I wanted to give them another chance to whisper something, beyond what is expected, in a quiet way that welcomes interpretation.
My work speaks of the importance of scraps, dead stuff, what is considered waste, or useless. Even on a human scale. I would like my work to invite people to change perspective and unhinge those assumptions society and the culture of waste and commodity have created for us and are too often not questioned but built upon and reinforced. In this project there is an intimacy that comes with the size and the content of the prints. They are images that open themselves to a dialogue, without the preconceived notion of what they are. How often do I have this openness of not thinking I already know what is in front of me?
This project is a metaphor of the elusiveness of essence and its perception. It speaks about the gap between what we are as humans and how we are perceived by others. It visually reveals the incongruence between how we are and how we are read. In relationships, it’s not about who we are, but how we are seen.
The ink prints also remind me of pressed flowers. I live in North Carolina and the first thing I noticed when I moved to the south was the lush vegetation. I have spent many afternoons plucking flowers and pressing them in books. The pressed flower is so delicate. It freezes the natural cycle of the flower, preserving lifelike forever.
SR: Exactly. That is one beautiful way of preserving them. The prints are in fact pressed flowers, in a way. It’s their voice, the mark they make. The trace they want to leave behind. I think of this a lot.
The photographs are haunting. Also made during quarantine. Can you speak about what was inspiring you, keeping you company during this time?
SR: It was the beginning of quarantine in Italy, and Tarkovsky’s films, polaroids, and writings were keeping me company together with films by Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Leonora Carrington’s haunting and beautiful paintings, the work and life of Henri Rousseau, Louise Bourgeois’ prints and drawings, Van Gogh’s letters.
Through Tarkovsky’s powerful work I remember experiencing feeling my body more whole, as if I were an entity in his films. As if he was giving myself back to myself. He and all the other inspiring companions awakened in me a feeling of hope for a life dedicated to art.
One day at the beginning of March, my urban garden was offering me three daffodils. I cut them because it was raining, and they would have lasted longer out of the rain. I had intended them as an offering to Mary and St. Joseph. I found myself holding these proud yet humble and elegant flowers and had a sort of sacred reverence towards them, as they were almost too beautiful to look at. I wanted to do them justice. Their elusive beauty almost shook me. I was outside on the patio, the rain falling, my feet in the water, the bright daffodils in my hands. I felt like I was the Russian poet at the baths in Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, the bearer of light, with a candle in his hands. It all felt so real. I felt so alive in the act of capturing that moment. An idea that had been vaguely meandering through my soul for months crystallized in that moment, in those photos.
Silvia Rigozzi is a ceramist, poet, photographer and gardener based in Milan.
Casserole Recipe of the Week:
Italian Inspired Casserole
I mean who doesn’t like a noodle dish??
Ingredients:
1-1/2 lb bulk Italian sausage
1-1/2 lb ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped green pepper
2 cans (15 ounce each) tomato sauce
2 cans (6 ounces each) tomato paste
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
2 cans (8-3/4 ounces each) whole kernel corn, drained
2 cans (2-1/4 ounces each) sliced ripe olives, drained
1 package (16 ounces) wide noodles, cooked and drained
8 ounces cheddar cheese, cut into strips
Directions:
In a Dutch oven over medium heat, cook sausage, beef, onion and green pepper until meat is no longer pink; drain. Add the tomato sauce, tomato paste, water and seasonings; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Add corn and olives. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in noodles.
Pour into two greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking dishes. Top with cheese. Cover and bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes or until heated through.
(from Taste of Home)