PIA NICOTRA

1986, Argentina, lives and works in Florence, Italy.

She studied fashion design at Universidad Empresarial Siglo21, graduating in 2011 with a final project about wearable sculptures. She has worked in the fashion industry in Argentina and in Italy for 12 years.

In 2018 she started her studies in visual arts at Accademia d’Arte Ad’A (Florence), beginning with one year of painting lessons and completing her education with a Master’s course.

Connecting with inner consciousness is what drives her to create. Her artistic practice is an expression of a spiritual journey, and reflects her interests in Kabbalah, meditation, metaphysics and cosmological theories.

In the series of paintings Snapshots of an inner journey, Pia Nicotra has developed a specific syntax, taking as a basic element the hand – which, on a cultural-historical level, has in itself an expressive force that, although related to verbal language, to a certain extent transcends it: consider the accompaniment of all our spoken discourse with gestures or referring to art and to Western painting tradition, the importance of the position of the hands as a social and metaphorical attribute (expression of virtue).

The hands are meaningful also in religions: the stigmata of Christ or his depiction as Pantocrator with the particular formula of the blessing of the fingers; the Islamic Hamsa; the precise and variable positions of the hands in the statues of the Buddha; and so on in many other traditions including Judaism (especially in Kabbalah). The artist takes inspiration from a series of experiences he has had over time, in that dimension that we define as spiritual, through practices of meditation and Reiki: beyond the particular practices to take prominence is a tension to elevation, in relation to the fundamental questions that human beings ask themselves about their own existence and purpose.

So the aspects of form and meaning are interpenetrating: painting is the place where this union is expressed, through compositions in which the hands make discourse, together with the symbolic use of colours (magenta, purple, red, blue, green). The “internal” journey that the artist makes becomes an experience that can be shared through vision: the individual and overall positions of the hands express aspects such as detachment from matter, the ego, the process of giving and receiving, relationships, fluidity.

“Through the artworks in this series, I try to give a visible form to the spiritual beliefs that I have had and shaped during my life, asking myself where I mentally position the idea of God or of being superior, where I believe the answers are to be found, in which direction we need to go. The search for salvation “on high”, the continuous flow of cycles and the desire for union with totality find expression in these compositions. The hands – an extremely expressive part of the body, a symbol of giving and receiving, and a channel of energy and transformation – as a subject refer to the experience of human existence and the search for its meaning. The use of colour is linked to the symbolism of the Chakras of the human body, where red and orange correspond to the lowest vibrations linked to matter, passing from the green and blue of emotion and expressive will to magenta/violet, the colour of awareness and transcendence”.