Artist Glues Pieces of Italy Together on Paper
By Kim Se-jeong
Staff Reporter
At first, the images look like photos or paintings.
But upon closer inspection, one quickly realizes they are neither.
In fact, they are collages, an art genre that uses an assemblage of different forms. Monica Incisa, an Italian artist, has been making such works for nearly 10 years.
A collection of her original collages and photos of her works on are currently exhibited at the Museum of Photography in Seoul.
She was invited to Seoul about six months ago by the Italian Embassy here.
Italian Ambassador Massimo Andrea Leggeri said the exhibition's opening message, "I am pleased to present a new form of art from Italy, a country with rich artistic tradition."
What makes her work so distinctly Italian are the images she has chosen from around Rome: Ponte die Quattro Capi (The Pons Fabricius), the oldest Roman bridge; Via Margutta, a small street; Madama Lucrezia, one of the five "talking statues"; and the Colosseum.
The process of making collages is simple yet time-consuming.
She starts off with photographs of an object. She copies the image onto paper with a pencil.
Then, she cuts the photograph into small pieces almost like a puzzle, and then glues them back on the portrait paper.
Creativity comes in when she, for example, decorated the surface of the Colosseum with photos of various other walls in Rome.
How much time does she spend on each work?
"Don't ask me that. It's like asking a ballerina how much she practices before a performance. How much do you practice when you write?" Incisa said.
For some of the works, she said, she glued pieces onto the original photo rather than onto the copy.
Incisa's interest in collage began as a hobby, with a box of photographs sitting in her house.
She said she struggled at first because she didn't know what she was doing.
Now, as a professional, she has been invited to exhibit her works all over the world.
Her projects require her to go to the location of an object, she said, and to take the same picture several times.
Regarding her photographic techniques, she said she never learned to take photos, not even from her husband, who works as a professional photographer.
Insica studied law in collage, a decision enforced by her parents, who, in fact, saw no hope in art when it came to their child's future.
Working for newspapers and magazines as an illustrator gave her some degree of satisfaction.
She said publications always had a political message weaved into her illustrations and it was no longer her own creation.
Now, she's living in Rome with her husband as a housewife and a full-time collage artist.
She said she is taking many photos while she's staying in Seoul.
"You never know what you'll do in the future," she explained as to why she was taking so many photos.
The exhibition will stay open until the end of March.
For more information, visit the Web site: www.iicseoul.esteri.it/IIC-Seoul.