A cup of tea with Samantha Stella! A cup of steaming tea. A delicate woman who tells you about her life, her dedication to art, 360-degrees art, art in its most hidden facets. A few moments of silence, Goldfrapp.and Portished as a lovely background to a beautiful conversation which has nothing of a normal cold interview. It has been a sharing of visions. Meeting Samantha Stella.
Samantha, with Sergio Frazzingaro is part of Corpicrudi, a visionary artistic project based in Italy. The artists’ work has been shown in international contemporary art galleries, museums and theaters. To give life and shape to their visions, they collaborate with writers, poets, choreographers, stylists, visual artists, musicians, composers and filmmakers. For their artistic projects they use to combine different techniques like photography, video and installations.
Keywords: Life, Death, Beauty, Harmony and Eternity.
Opposites. White, black. Fragility, power. Silence, shout. Pleasure, pain. Life, death.
KALTBLUT: Your study is based on extreme opposites. You look for that, you analyze them, you admire them, reveal them exploding in multiple directions, through your eyes, your bodies. What does that mean to you? When do the opposite meet? Is there any other colour?
Samantha: We are looking for that subtle balance where we measure our human being, that area of intersection where our opposite voices meat each other.
A thousand shades. And surely Red.
KALTBLUT: Body. Corpicrudi (raw bodies). It’s evident from the name: body. Body is important in most of your projects, yours or the one of people you choose. Where does this name come from?
Samantha: A play on words born thinking to the body as the first means of expression since I was a child, and to the desire of revealing those opposite voices.
KALTBLUT: In your videos I always feel a sublime instability, as if something is going to happen. Seems like, from that raw body, staring at nothing, around few minutes, a new world would come out.
What do you want to tell?
Samantha: Sublime instability. Tension towards a white utopia. Need for real communication.
KALTBLUT: Beauty. Your study has art as cornerstone, especially neoclassic.
What’s beauty for you? Does a universal standard exists or is it a purely subjective view?
Samantha: Beauty is that white island where everything calms down in angelic contemplation.
It cannot be described in the manner of an instruction manual. It is perception. Sensitivity. It has no antibodies. It is the Idea. I can probably talk about my Idea of Beauty referring to the historical past of the culture to which I belong and that throughout the centuries has reached us as a valuable source of nutrition and comparison for the exploration of our contemporary world.
KALTBLUT: Harmony. When you have a theme you make it blow up in videos, photography, music, installations and live performances. Different facets of a unique vision. How can you do that? What would you never forsake?
Samantha: Harmony is one of my beloved words. It ‘s just a natural process for me. The expression of a vision, the exploration of that subtle balance inevitably occurs through any available means and languages.
I would never give authenticity up. It is an essential aspect.
KALTBLUT: Synergy. Writers, choreographers, stylists, visual artists, composers, there are so many featuring’s. How do you create efficient synergies?
Samantha: Cohesion of visions. Instinct. Confidence. Honestly it is like a kind of direction that we make on a concept that we launched and that we explore by various means, languages and eyes, not always just ours. And this makes the challenge more interesting and pregnant, and with a good dose of courage.
KALTBLUT: Intensity. A moment when you felt like: “I’m alive.” Not necessarily the happiest, just the most intense one.
Samantha: I always found it difficult to define and call myself as an artist. Through the years the closest word I can use is Condemnation. Inevitable, perhaps pleasant. Endless instants in which our own internal vision takes shape and becomes shared with the outside, what I could assimilate to a great moment of intensity, alternating with moments of restlessness, loneliness and lack of sense of belonging to the world around us.
KALTBLUT: Future. “The Virgins” was a pale and absorbed world. “Symphony in Black”, on the other side, was emotional and heart-breaking. What about the future?
Samantha: I do not think the world has a unique colour. My world is still full of black and white visions and many shades in between. But if White and Black are symbols of Life and Death, Eternity and Caducity, I have to think to a third element which human have always faced, I mean heart, blood, feelings, Love. Red. It will soon be Red in that area of intersection between good and evil where we are looking for our island of peace and harmony.
Utopia. Our next projects: on March 31 at Nonostante Marras in Milan my new live installation “Symphony in Red” curated by Fam. Starting May 9 I will perform at Venice Biennial International Art Exhibition with Jasa Mrevlje Pollak. I am collaborating with filmmaker Roberto Rup Paolini for his first movie. On May 15 the exhibition Corpicrudi and Mustafa Sabbagh at Traffic Gallery in Bergamo.
Then a new choral project about “Vita Nova” by Dante Alighieri and a movie by Davide Ferrario including the collaboration with choreographer Matteo Levaggi.
