Can we still create new horizontal narratives that do not claim to replace the official ones, but simply vent the imagination in alternative realities? Alessandra La Marca (Potenza, 1998) carries out this intent in her first solo exhibition at BIOF – Blue Institute Of Futures, Coreografie Ancestrali (Ancestral Choreographies), curated by A.p.s Zona Blu.
Alessandra La Marca, “Coreografie Ancestrali”, 2025, installation view, photo Mario Hysenbelli, courtesy BIOF and the artist
Coreografie Ancestrali represents a fascinating and profound journey that begins with the organic nature of life forms through painting. In the unprecedented series of works on display, the artist constructs visual narratives that shape new narratives and mythologies by bringing to life figures that seem to emerge from the unconscious – almost transcending physical reality – and conversely come from the natural world. Each canvas is thus constituted as a microcosm in which the organic is transformed into narrative, revealing both biological fragility and complexity and fascinating regenerative and adaptive capacity. Alessandra La Marca’s pictorial language is full of symbolism and iconography that the artist’s work evokes a recognizable aesthetic-cultural background for us, thus going to the eye and reflecting on the essential links in the ecosystem.
Alessandra La Marca, “Coreografie Ancestrali”, 2025, installation view, photo Mario Hysenbelli, courtesy BIOF and the artist
The artist’s practice is always intertwined with research in science; a strong fascination with the study and knowledge of biology and especially with the abilities (both metamorphosis and resistance) of rare life forms emerges in all her works. Alessandra La Marca not only delineates natural forms in novel ways but also produces alternative narratives to the official ones. As in ‘The Thousand and One Nights,’ the exhibition is a thickening of mythological tales and stories set up on the walls of the space and offered to the viewer on special media designed by the artist to exhibit both the front and back of the canvases. Unveiling the reverse side of the paintings is a precise choice: allowing one to peer into the conclusion on one side and the origin on the other admits the viewer into an evolving and intimate dimension that matches the intent of the work. In addition, a small room with a sound installation of the artist’s stories ends the exhibition, in which we indulge in love dances between: the sun and cyanobacteria, between algae and spores that generates lichens, between jellyfish and water, and finally between Velella velella (a kind of jellyfish whose body is composed of several independent organisms) and the moon.
Alessandra La Marca, “Coreografie Ancestrali”, 2025, installation view, photo Mario Hysenbelli, courtesy BIOF and the artist
The dominant hue is blue and the forms are mostly abstract: the contrast between the narratives and poetry of art practice with the raw and bare space also brings a reflection on the artificial and organic. The artist connects with Donna Haraway and Ursula K. Le Guin’s theories that explore connections between humans and otherness: her practice takes from both philosophies a vision of interconnected, imaginary worlds in constant interaction. Alessandra La Marca’s solo exhibition challenges conventional narratives and rediscovers the power of interconnected worlds, as imaginary as they are real. Through her painting, the artist not only creates alternative stories, but also hybridizes pictorial language with science, nature and mythology, in an ongoing dialogue between the visible and the invisible, the organic and the transcendent.
Irene Follador
Info:
Alessandra La Marca. Coreografie Ancestrali
curated by A.p.s Zona Blu
text by Francesca De Chiara
18/02 – 26/02/2025
BIOF – Blue Institute Of Futures
Via Ludovico di Breme, 52, Milano
Blue Institute of Futures | Linktree
Irene Follador (Venice, 1997) is an emerging critic and curator. She graduated first in Art History at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, and then she obtained a master’s degree at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. She has been collaborating with Juliet Art Magazine for a long time and, at the same time, she carries out her independent curatorial practice; her research and interest mainly tends towards works of moving images and new Media within the contemporary art system.
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