semi senza essenza (incertae sedis), 2021
Viola Poli’s artistic research is centred around organic and fluid materials, on the potential of life that resists human domination, and the paradox that they thrive in an environment ordered by people. The artist is thus interested in the coexistence of multiple organisms in the same space. Through a process of assembly, cohabitation, contamination, and sometimes confrontation, her juxtaposed objects and materials evolve over time, entering into relationships; some cover others entirely, concealing or absorbing them, while others spread uncontrollably like mold, or simply freeze. This combination creates dystopian atmospheres – or, on the contrary, ones that are full of latent life.
Marie-Eve Knoerle
Full text / @vi.iola
Viola Poli grew up on the shores of Lake Lugano. She left her native Ticino to first study education, and then art at the Haute école d'art et de design in Geneva. After a three-year course in sculpture and installation, with a semester in Leipzig, she completed the master's programme in contemporary artistic practices – Work.Master. Right from the outset, industrial, urban and everyday spaces have been her main point of interest. But in the last two years, she has shifted her perspective on these spaces, paying closer attention to organisms resisting human domination and other parallel forms of life, experimenting with different processes and mediums, like assemblage, found objects, and ceramics. She explores the intermediate stages of different materials, allowing them to follow their natural transformation, thus hindering her own control. As a result, her exhibition spaces often become as much the subject of her work as the other elements.
©Isabelle Meister (portrait)
©Thomas Maisonnasse
Arcade provided by the Naef Immobilier
Viola Poli
la glaneuse des intensités