Nicol Vizioli
Portraits in Contemporary Photography 2013
Selections from a Series: An Opening Song
In the 19th Century Arthur Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin propounded that phylogenetic branched trees derived from a single ancestor, which meant that all forms of life are tied by relationships of common descent. From a biological point of view, this is extremely “simple”; it suggests life as we know it was created with an original being. Thus with the first cry of each new birth, our collective memory resonates with that first piercing song of arrival. We are reminded our ancestral consciousness, we are reminded of our animal dimension.
Nicol Vizioli started her photographic project An opening song in April 2012. It all started with a dream, then a meeting in the crowd with the first woman bird, Helene; Nicol pursued birds of prey and found herself in the hauntingly beautiful English countryside. In the presence of these wild animals that dominate the wind and the currents, the artist’s soul was stirred and awakened. The artist recognises that our souls are suppressed and inhibited to true expression if we don’t return to the breathe of life. This is something intangible, of wind and profound unity with nature, and only then, once we return, can our indomitable visceral pasts reawaken. That day in the English countryside, Nicol heard nature’s enchanting mysterious song as it breathed life.
A long period of reflection, readings, drawings and meetings with characters that are able to understand and share her journey, or that have it in their DNA, whom then become her models. Albino, twins, rebellious souls, old and woodland travellers.
It's the union of these varying vital strengths (the wild animal, the thinking animal and the prodigy animal) the strength of the photographic medium is unleashed in the hands of Nicol. She captures a simultaneous expressive fury and aesthetic balance to her photos which makes them able to speak to every individual and universally iconographic. Observers are encouraged to feel cognisant of the warm comforting protection of the womb alongside our fragile vulnerability facing the whirling enormity of Nature. Glimpses of Nature’s symbols since time immemorial are revealed.
Flawed, dirty, obscure, mysterious, aware of descending from the same progeny. Embodied in a tribal way, bodies covered with dust and soil bring the signs of the cost and of the fatigue to be reborn, a forfeit of that old legacy where we all belong.
The analogical portraits tell us about a return to life, a collective rite of passage from one dimension to another, from simply surviving, to living, they explore the holders of this primordial spark, this original force of which we all come from. That first song, which is impossible not to recognise in front of the photographs so dramatic of Nicol Vizioli, crosses us like a lost memory which is suddenly found again.
extract from An Opening Song
text by Giovanni Cervi
(translation by Farhaan Mumtaz)
Born in Rome, Nicol Vizioli lives and works in London.
Selections from a Series: An Opening Song
In the 19th Century Arthur Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin propounded that phylogenetic branched trees derived from a single ancestor, which meant that all forms of life are tied by relationships of common descent. From a biological point of view, this is extremely “simple”; it suggests life as we know it was created with an original being. Thus with the first cry of each new birth, our collective memory resonates with that first piercing song of arrival. We are reminded our ancestral consciousness, we are reminded of our animal dimension.
Nicol Vizioli started her photographic project An opening song in April 2012. It all started with a dream, then a meeting in the crowd with the first woman bird, Helene; Nicol pursued birds of prey and found herself in the hauntingly beautiful English countryside. In the presence of these wild animals that dominate the wind and the currents, the artist’s soul was stirred and awakened. The artist recognises that our souls are suppressed and inhibited to true expression if we don’t return to the breathe of life. This is something intangible, of wind and profound unity with nature, and only then, once we return, can our indomitable visceral pasts reawaken. That day in the English countryside, Nicol heard nature’s enchanting mysterious song as it breathed life.
A long period of reflection, readings, drawings and meetings with characters that are able to understand and share her journey, or that have it in their DNA, whom then become her models. Albino, twins, rebellious souls, old and woodland travellers.
It's the union of these varying vital strengths (the wild animal, the thinking animal and the prodigy animal) the strength of the photographic medium is unleashed in the hands of Nicol. She captures a simultaneous expressive fury and aesthetic balance to her photos which makes them able to speak to every individual and universally iconographic. Observers are encouraged to feel cognisant of the warm comforting protection of the womb alongside our fragile vulnerability facing the whirling enormity of Nature. Glimpses of Nature’s symbols since time immemorial are revealed.
Flawed, dirty, obscure, mysterious, aware of descending from the same progeny. Embodied in a tribal way, bodies covered with dust and soil bring the signs of the cost and of the fatigue to be reborn, a forfeit of that old legacy where we all belong.
The analogical portraits tell us about a return to life, a collective rite of passage from one dimension to another, from simply surviving, to living, they explore the holders of this primordial spark, this original force of which we all come from. That first song, which is impossible not to recognise in front of the photographs so dramatic of Nicol Vizioli, crosses us like a lost memory which is suddenly found again.
extract from An Opening Song
text by Giovanni Cervi
(translation by Farhaan Mumtaz)
Born in Rome, Nicol Vizioli lives and works in London.
Selections from a Series: On Shadows On Parade
Shadows on Parade is a series of portraits; they are declinations of my imagery, unsatisfied desires, waits, silent attempts of redemption. Sometimes they are dreams. More often they are prayers.
There is no scenario: the possible reality is a black box, antechamber of desire, abyss. There is no emptiness or total absence of life, but a summary of all the choices and possibilities, from which life's forms and shapes come from. And in that obscurity I weaved memories, exploring remembrances, instincts and desires. Due to the soft light figures appear like a revelation and the rest remains wrapped in the deep darkness, in the mistery.
I shot with the marvel of who can wait, the wait of a moment, the photographic one, the illuminated one of Caravaggio, the fatal one of Bacon.
There are no spectators, only witnesses.
Shadows on Parade is a series of portraits; they are declinations of my imagery, unsatisfied desires, waits, silent attempts of redemption. Sometimes they are dreams. More often they are prayers.
There is no scenario: the possible reality is a black box, antechamber of desire, abyss. There is no emptiness or total absence of life, but a summary of all the choices and possibilities, from which life's forms and shapes come from. And in that obscurity I weaved memories, exploring remembrances, instincts and desires. Due to the soft light figures appear like a revelation and the rest remains wrapped in the deep darkness, in the mistery.
I shot with the marvel of who can wait, the wait of a moment, the photographic one, the illuminated one of Caravaggio, the fatal one of Bacon.
There are no spectators, only witnesses.
- SCOPE Basel - International Contemporary Art Show - Basel, Switzerland – June 2013
- Finalist - Premio Combat Prize, Livorno, IT - 2012
- SCOPE Miami - International Contemporary Art Show - Miami, USA - 2012
- Shortlisted, Student Focus WPO – World Photography Organization – Sony World Photography Awards – 2011
- World Photography Festival London - 2011
- 5th Eclettica Festival - Rome, IT - 2009
- Finalist - 2nd International Prize Arte Laguna (painting), Venice, IT – 2007
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