Claudia D'Angelo
I write and make collages. I find it difficult to separate the two artistic practices because, whether I like it or not, they continuously influence one another in a play of mistakes and affinities. In my writing there is always an uncanny, fantastical element that projects us into another dimension: a kind of glitch that transforms reality into a new world—wonderful and frightening at the same time, yet familiar—revealing its inconsistencies and exploring humanity’s guilt and anxieties. My writing is also often a play of structures, recurrences and echoes, as in oral stories and fairy tales. Most of my collages begin with paper on paper. I retrieve images from magazines, newspapers and supermarket leaflets—it is an ecological discipline—cut them out and rearrange them, guided by the (in)congruities that emerge. In other cases I work digitally, retracing the same gesture as paper collage through overlaps, cuts and masking. I play with perspective and create ironic images, as well as new creatures and new worlds whose resemblance to our bodies and our earth generates horror or wonder.
I was born and raised in Italy, and moved to Dublin at the end of 2021. I continued to write in Italian, but recently I have also begun writing in English.