Talking about Claudia Amatruda‘s works always moves me and in every circumstance. A love, the one between Claudia and art, that was born at a young age through photographic film and later moved on to digital. The need to tell about her body and its changes have led the artist to recently expand her research, bordering on video and installations. For those who don’t know her yet, Claudia, born in 1995, is a visual artist with a degree in Photography and Visual Design from Naba in Milan. Her work focuses on the representation of the body through photography and video installations, dealing with social issues supported by research on scientific and literary texts. In 2019 she published the photography book Naiade, presented in Italian schools and festivals to raise awareness on the topic of invisible diseases. From 2021 to today her project When you hear hoofbeats think of horses, not zebras has been exhibited in Italy, Greece, France, Holland and England. In 2022 she obtained the Special Mention in the Emerging Photography section of the Francesco Fabbri Prize. Just this week, in Bologna, at Labas, as part of the programme una sedia è una sedia, non è una sedia è una non, a visual monographic exhibition of Claudia is also being held. To find out more, we decided to meet her and have a chat.
Claudia Amatruda, “Sand Mountain”, video frame, 2023, courtesy the artist
Sara Papini: When did the idea of expanding your research from photography to video arise?
Claudia Amatruda: Photography, by its nature, cannot fully convey movement, and it is precisely because of this limitation that I felt the need to start using video. I began to record actions, gestures that I perform with my body or that I make my aids perform. It is a sort of performance. I use video language precisely when I need to convey action.
Claudia Amatruda, “Untitled 3. Good use of my body health”, video frame , 2023, courtesy the artist
Could you tell us about the genesis of the two videos being screened at Labas?
The two videos were born during the MigrArt 4 artistic residency in Lignano Sabbiadoro in 2023, an experience that allowed me to give space to some questions that I had been asking myself for a long time: what is autonomy? what is a body? what does it mean to depend? In the first video, Sand Mountain, my body faces a symbolic climb, abandoning the support tools. That small cone of sand becomes my personal mountain, a symbolic place where the limit of pain cannot be perceived. It is an exploration of the border, of the edge, of the limits – real or internal – that are sewn onto us. In the second video, the wheelchair rotates around me as in a dance, a sort of role exchange, a silent dialogue between body and technology, between need and possibility. In Wheelchair Disco, however, the body withdraws, leaving the scene to my electric wheelchair. It is “she” who dances to the rhythm of the music I listen to in my headphones, while I guide it with a remote control behind the camera. Its mechanical sounds, recorded during the performance, compose a new melody: annoying, metallic, but alive. In the second part of the video, the wheelchair interacts with the other people who are dancing, and it is as if I were dancing through her too. Her noises merge with the disco music, transforming from friction to rhythm.
Claudia Amatruda, “Untitled 1. Good use of my body health”, video frame , 2023, courtesy the artist
What are your plans for the future?
“Don’t underestimate the consequences of love.” (Quote). Jokes aside, I have three new exhibitions scheduled between now and September and in the meantime I’m continuing my research on the cyborg body, on prosthetics and on chairs as extensions of the body, in relation to the natural and animal world – especially marine mammals. I don’t know yet where all this will take me, but I’m curious to find out. For now, I like to stay in the present.
Info:
Claudia Amatruda: Loop video projection of Wheelchair Disco and Sand Mountain
9-13/04/2025
Labas
Vicolo Bolognetti, 2 – Bologna
She was born in Genoa but currently lives in Bologna, the city where she graduated from CITEM with a thesis on video art. She works in the world of events in the production sector and is an assistant professor of Visual Studies at UNIBO.
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