Ilaria Ferretti (Fabriano, 1980) grew up in her family’s restaurant, spending many childhood afternoons sat on the dishwasher in the kitchen, watching her mother at work at the stove. In ’99 she moved to Turin to study photography and find her way into the art world. She started her artistic career upon graduating in photography at the European Institute of Design. Expert in FineArt printing techniques and dark room processes, she creates visionary works characterised by a personal aesthetic, which merges dark thoughts and universal beauty.
Ilaria Ferretti’s artistic vision is multifaceted and conceptual thanks to a photographic time which freezes the incessant time of the natural world, she creates images which hold a continual manifestation of being. Humans are not usually present in her images but there are traces, signs of passage; this presence/absence, in relation to the universal meaning of existence determines the key aim of her work. The animal world is often represented and through it life is revealed. The project Bestiario (Bestiary) was in ARTEFIERA at the MUST GALLERY (Lugano) stand in January 2015, it has been published as editorial on Yet Magazine, an online magazine about photography of worldwide artists, and exposed at ESSERE(e)MISTERO, Contemporary Art Review edited by Maria Rita Montagnani, at Palazzo Mediceo of Seravezza (IT) in 2014; it has been at Lingotto of Turin in Bam on tour – Contemporary Photobox edited by Edoardo Di Mauro in 2013 and in the exhibit Bestiari (Pietro Bologna, Stefano Faravelli, Ilaria Ferretti, Roberto Kusterle) at PHOS Multipurpose Center for Photography and Visual Arts to Chieri (IT); it has been also exposed in the exhibition Barocco (Daniela Perego, Pia Stadtbaumer, Elke Warth, Ilaria Ferretti) edited by Franz Paludetto at the Castle of Rivara – Contemporary Art Center (Italy) in 2011. She has held exhibitions inside public and private spaces in Torino, Milano, Bologna, Padova, Köln and several sites in Le Marche, homeland which has always provided energy and inspiration for her research. She has been selected for the national Quotidiana 07 competition, she has won in the Working Landscapes section in 2008 and 2009 with her “Majolica” and “Cement” series, the last of which has been shown in her “Concrete” personal exhibition, organized by Veronica Iurich at the Napapijri Gallery store of Milan (2009) and in PATCHWORK collective exhibition organized by MUST GALLERY in Lugano (December 2014). Her poetics has been defined as “Punk-Romantic” (Pippo Ciorra), her photographic eye “An eclipse of the sight that becomes perception” (Fulvio Bortolozzo), and her work “Can give us the skin of the world, the rhythm of time and are a memory to keep safe” (Veronica Iurich). She “Reflects herself in the landscape and brings to light for herself, as well as for the rest of us, a vortex of deep emotions” (Fulvio Bortolozzo), “She moves with ease inside the contradictions of contemporary aesthetics, to which has to honestly and emphatically suffer over the loss of the environment’s integrity, but at the same time she cannot avoid giving up on the aesthetic aspects of such condition” (Pippo Ciorra). |
