Antonella Pedetti is a Visual Artist and Architect.
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay and grew up since she was 4 years old in Buenos Aires, Argentina with Italian ancestors has lived around the world during the last two decades - in Germany, Ecuador, Indonesia and Taiwan.
She studied in Buenos Aires, at the National School of Fine Arts "Prilidiano Pueyrredon" and Architecture at the Buenos Aires University.UBA
She has taught in both institutions where she studied and has participated in several individual and collective exhibitions around the world.
Her style is in continuous evolution, as it is her context, that produces a incessant metamorphosis; a constant in her life.
Based on independent investigation and several workshops in new techniques, she ventured her work into different techniques, trying to capture the contrasting cultures enriched by a foreign perspective.
Series
Serie "Buenos Aires": during her life in Argentina, most of Antonella’s works are expressionist individual works depicting different characters of the city. Mixing literature and a sense of tango, this work reminds us about the universe of Cortazar and Borges.
Serie "Vacas": this serie of 12 painting was created as on commission to be used as separation frames for the film Vacas Gordas (2006) of Giorgio Peretti. It focusses on the “Mataderos” and the contrast of cow flesh and blood on dark backgrounds, as a reflection of the conflicting times of Buenos Aires in 2001.
Serie "Toros Braford": This serie of six paintings followed “Vacas” and shows an opposite view on the same topic, focusing on the calm quietness of her loved Pampa Argentina, as a contrast of chaos and peace.
Serie "Turquesa": A modern view on landscape painting, this serie was started during her life in Quito, Ecuador, showing the immensity of the contrast between nature and humans. Although originally inspired in the Andes, it includes references other parts of the world as Norwegian fiords and the German Taunus.
Project Minifiguren: A disruptive change of style on her work started with a serie that mixes small plastic modified figures and painting. Moving out of the canvas into acrylic cubes and wooden boxes, it shows the life of a woman in a modern city and her barriers to succeed.
Series "Sawah": After one year leaving and searching about Indonesia;a foreign view to a millenary culture, mixing colours and fabrics while creating one harmonic unity with multiple messages.
The universal essentials of the Sawah series:
➢The working man as part of a modified landscape, nurturing the culture of the earth that he lives on.
➢The sawah knit the land, as the batik interacts with the canvas, creating oniric landscapes with hidden mysterious characters.
➢The mixture of colours, presenting a multitude of cultures, based with one common history represented by the sawah.
➢The man as creator and part of the nature; modifying, participating.
I found in the rice fields a new Pampas, where the old history is mixed in a landscape of immensity.
Open Atelier Kemang Exhibtion-May 2016
Series "Rootless"A dream of Water and distance.
➢Rootless, having no roots.
Somebody who has left her country, culture, traditions, family, and all what represents the essence of a person.
Breaking your cultural roots implies losing the north on aspects that most of humans consider fixed. I went through a process to find new ground where to build up my new cultural ties. Like a tree, every person needs to have roots, to fuel its passion and creativity, and as this is vital for an artist, I went through a process of fabrication of new ones.
The person cannot grow roots in any place, he or she needs a fertile soil. I needed to create my own soil on and decided that this soil was to be set on a fluid, mobile place.
Flowing freely. Rain, streams, rivers, oceans and clouds. Fluids from different sources that grow into other fields.
All these different states of water became my moving soil, where to set base for my passion and inspiration. If I link my roots to my dreams, and those are fluid dreams, then my inspiration can come from any place that this stream will bring me to.
My roots became a mobile concept where imagination, creation and disruption are the only component that gives life to my art.
Water is unstoppable as is the artistic creation. Emanating into the new grounds, bringing life, as any cultural interchange modifies the original culture and creates a new view to it.
The artist is shown challenged by the environment, but fighting back
Antonella Pedetti
through her art and in that process becoming the artwork herself.
You can see many figures in my work, mainly represented as a woman, as that character is myself. The paintings becomes part of my pains, of my nostalgia, of my losses and victories, and therefore they become part of my person and I become part of my artwork.
This is the way of my dreams: a line of water.
In some of my paintings you can get to know the essence of different places where my roots were influenced. You may recognize the silhouette of Argentina, you can perceive the mountains of Ecuador or the batik of Indonesia. You can comprehend that as the artist roots are mobile, they are a moving concept that starts in Argentina and end in Indonesia.
Roots that are like a path of a pencil that goes from Buenos Aires, to the Andes, and then to Europe, coming finally to Indonesia.
Jorge Luis Borges, an argentinean writer, once wrote asking himself who he was on the other side on his dreams.
¿Quién serás esta noche en el oscuro sueño, del otro lado de su muro? J.L.Borges
When dreaming your real self comes out, and therefore although you may be rootless in your dreams an artist always have strong roots.
Like a nomade that changes places of leaving made me rootless, but als created on me this other part where I fix the roots into my dreams, my real self. The one that is awake while I am sleeping my life.
My dreams became my real roots, and probably they were so even before becoming rootless.
Solo Exhibition "Rootless" at Komunitas Salihara.Jakarta, Indonesia.October 2018.
Bali Series, "Puzzling Landscapes".
Exhibition "Puzzling Landscapes" at Kensington Town Hall.London, England.July 2019.
➢The harmony of life in the Sawah(rice fields) creates a dreamlike landscape as the continuous search for balance on art.
Series "Fighting back".COVID-19aRT
Exhibition at Atelier & Gallery Kemang.Jakarta, Indonesia.March 2020.
➢A pandemic is crossing our lives, building up through the air, finding a home in our mouth, growing in our body, influencing our behaviour while we are fighting back tirelessly...
➢We are just a canvas for a merciless virus, humanity is a piece of art, the author is not to be mentioned...
Series "Lost in translation".
➢New horizons, crossing frontiers, new roots to create.
Exhibition at Atelier Taipei.Taipei, Taiwan.March 2021
Exhibition at Atelier & Gallery Yangminshan.Taipei, Taiwan.April 2022
Series "Rootless becoming root full".
➢Reverse culture shock?
Exhibition on process.Argentina.Buenos Aires.2022