My work spins around the notions of heritage, culture and the shift of meaning that representations can undergo in society. Employing a wide range of media into my practice, I not only use long-established practices of art making such as painting, drawing and sculpture but I also experiment with found objects and site specific installations. I am interested on the ambiguity of cultural representation and how contents can propagate and transform. My work is concerned with the meaning that representations gain in a political and cultural context and how this can affect themes of self-identification and identity.

My paintings and installations at first view can appear sunny and cheerful, at the same time they tackle crucial political and autobiographical subjects. This is delineated in my animated canvases of birds and neon works, related to my mother’s cultural imagery like in Mother’s Bliss project to neocolonial hues in Africanella. These works bring to light how representations and symbols can erode the immediate pleasure that is experienced when first viewing the image.

The mixture of art and sociology constitutes one of the characters of my art-making. My narratives blend historical and individual experience, personal events are often described as a mere social product. I want to shy away from deliver a mere autobiography, which I intend as an illusory retrospective reconstruction of myself. I always try to involve the viewer through my works which themselves multiply implication, echoing the cultural characters which I aspire to investigate.

cristiano tassinari 

cristiano tassinari