Biography
Romina Bassu was born in Rome in 1982, where she currently lives and works. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome and at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Seville. In 2004 she started to work as assistant at Alberto di Fabio and Cristiano Pintaldi’s studies. She continues her artistic research between London, Berlin and Spain where she starts Anonymous Archive. In this project Romina Bassu reproduces in a pictorial key a lot of ancient photographic images collected over the years. With this project, Romina Bassu begins to work on the connection between individual and collective memory, proposing a sort of archeology of memory. Her reflexion on memory aims to create a continuum between universal history and individual one. Over the years her research has increasingly focused more and more on the representation of those feminine stereotypes, modeled accordingly to the needs of a male culture and a society of consumption, which still today are taken for granted but painted though in a version “altered” by the female gaze. The apprehensive mother, the housewife proud of her talent in the art of ironing, the young woman looking for an husband, the girl eager to look beautiful. These and many others are the subjects of her works that come from a very specific iconography: the Fifties. This is the epoch when a particular female imaginary begins to take shape and inevitably will influence the next twenty years, up to present times.
The subjects of the most recent works (2018-2019) are about the connection between woman, body and vulnerability: three elements that, through pictorial narration, define an existential space. For the artist recovering and representing this space means access to a moment of humanity and authenticity – often handled with secrecy – in a time of consumerist culture that claims a constant productivity that extends also to the body of the woman herself.
The hallmark of his painting lies in the dark humor that always characterizes the imaginary of the artist’s works.
In the spring of 2017 she won the ARTFORARTSSAKE award in Berlin and in 2018 she was among the finalist of Premio Cairo (Milan, Italy). She exhibited her works in art galleries and museums in Spain, Germany, UK and Italy. Among her most recent exhibitions: Ciò che vedi. Nuova figurazione in Italia, curated by di M. de Pilati – A. Cramerotti, Galleria Civica di Trento – MART, Trento (forthcoming, February 2020); Monday blues, Studio SALES di Norberto Ruggeri, Roma (2019, S); Male gaze, SALES di Norberto Ruggeri, Roma (2017, S); Analogue Champion, Burning Giraffe Art Gallery, Turin (2017, S); Social utopia / Open Studies Festival, XII edition, Ameno, Novara (2016, G); Carte Blanche, Galerie Olivier Nouvellet, Paris (2016, G); Book Art Project, Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome (2015, G); Francesco Fabbri Award for Contemporary Arts 2015, Villa Brandolini, Treviso (2015, G); Combat Prize, Civic Museum G. Fattori ex Granai by Villa Mimbelli Livorno Natural History Museum (2013, G).
