Voyage MIA

Knowing art and design as a career could be devastatingly difficult, I studied Interior Design and Advertising Communications so I could find work after college. I struggled with shyness but often pushed myself into social situations with confidence I did not actually possess, using the contents of reading a lot of books dealing with philosophy, religion, physics, and the biographies of designers, architects, dancers and people I admired to see how they managed to be permitted to do the work they felt born to do. Torn between becoming a psychiatrist or pursuing art, as I had believed that helping people find inner peace and see the beauty in the world could motivate more cooperation, I was offered a grant to study social psychology abroad in Japan with the college I was working and studying at. Finding the behavior of people depressing to the point I felt I was torn so deeply about re-educating myself for a new field with problems I could not grapple with. I accepted the 3rd or 4th time. I tried applying to graduate school for art: this time not for photography, which I was doing as a job, but for studio arts.

The first year of grad school was terrifying. It took nearly 10 years (as for most students) to recover from, while also acclimating to living and working in Norway. My art practice opened up, and I let myself, as many other contemporary artists do, create in whatever medium the concept worked best in. Things were never stable in the world or life around me, and so I leaned into habits formed as a child to cope: long walks in nature, meditation, journaling, and developing a practice of grounding for making new artworks, continuing to study in depth the materials, meanings and histories of the resources I use to make the work. When I was offered art residencies, I took them even if I barely had the money to survive on because it was often the only choice I had at the time. It seemed every time a door to a job for teaching or marketing or something else closed or was not financially viable, I was offered a way to keep developing my work. I rewrote over 14 years of poetry during a residency in Paris, coinciding with the workers’ riots. The emotional turmoil of that coincided with a massive personal change I made that coincided with pursuing Italian citizenship through my great-grandmother, so I could maintain the memory of the language, the food, culture, and also force myself to experience a new way of life different than what felt like my inner nature.

The concept of Faith never made sense to me, and yet, each step of my development, as long as I kept practicing, trying to make art, every now, and then I would create something that, after several years of reflecting on it, could consider it art. Now I am continuing to develop and realize new projects in contexts that I also have little experience doing before, such as with cultural institutions and cooperating with government. I still have the desire for altruism, but I feel very careful to make any huge waves. I work to create art, publish books, and realize designs that invite «beautyness», as my friend Hanne has described it: that is a kind of beauty that is quiet and invites values that may be less revolutionary yet invite a cultural shift in values that can be healthy and good for more people than a few.