Maria Rebecca Ballestra was born in Italy, in Ventimiglia, in 1974, and she now works between Bordighera (Imperia) and the Principality of Monaco.
Born 1974 in Italy, Maria Rebecca graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 1998. From this moment on, she undertook a long and multifaceted career in the the visual arts and her works are shown all over the world in personal and group exhibitions, galleries and art fairs, public and private collections. She was awarded with several international prizes in the United States, Korea, France and Italy and held lectures and participated at symposiums in several European countries, including Boston University (USA), Hull University (UK), Maraya Art Center (UAE), Progr Zentrum (Switzerland), Genoa University (Italy), etc.
The Italian visual artist Maria Rebecca Ballestra lives and works in nomadic condition. Her work is focused on the reprocessing and resetting of social, political and environmental themes and on synthesizing ethno-cultural codes, investigated during journeys and several artist residencies program all around the world.
The peculiar approach chosen by the artist lead her to develop multidisciplinary projects, aimed at investigating social habits and conventions, often also linked with times and civilizations distant from those of Western Europe. These projects develop through various media, that include site specific installations, relational projects, and the more contemporary languages of performance, video, and photography.
Since 2012 Maria Rebecca Ballestra has started developing projects divided into “episodes”. The first one, entitled Journey into Fragility (2012-2014), resulted in twelve works of art, all created during a specific art residency or journey of the artist. The project aimed at investigating various aspects of the relationship between man and the natural environment and was inspired by reading the poet Massimo Morasso’s Carta per la terra e per l’uomo (2001), a “chart for the earth and for humankind” signed by many intellectuals.
www.journeyintofragility.com/
Labrys and Echoes of the Void can also be ascribed to this series of projects by stages. With the latter in particular, the artist wants to investigate the theme of the desert as a place and as a symbol, by resorting once again to an itinerary approach (from the Arctic to the Antarctic, via all of the continents of the world) in order to develop a reflection on the cultural, spiritual, environmental, and geological meanings of these limitless places.
echoesoftheworld.com
