Born in Italy and working internationally, Luisa Spina carries on an eclectic practice that spans from visual art, social sculpture, performance and workshop facilitation. Graduated in Fine Art in 2011 from Central Saint Martins, London, she specialised in sculpture. In 2013 she undertook a Master Degree in Social Sculpture in Oxford, UK, under the supervision of Shelley Sacks, a former collaborator of Joseph Beuys. She then worked on devising participatory processes to stimulate dialogue, exchange and self-reflection on contemporary and global issues such as migration and climate change. In 2016, she became a fellow at the Royal Society of Arts in London. Between 2015 and 2018 she participated in various festivals and exhibited in London, Berlin, Portugal, Latvia and Poland. In 2019 she moved to Berlin to join the Social Sculpture Academy lead by Shelley Saacks. The Academy has strong affinities with Joseph Beuys’ Free International University, and with the wider stream of experiments in emancipatory education that connect self and world.
She is currently involved in various research groups exploring ecological issues and post-colonial feminism. She has been working for the last few of years on the project “I am Circe” inspired by the powerful mythological yet contemporary character of Circe and looking at mythology and embodied movement practices to decolonize the body, deconstruct patriarchal gendered storytelling and go beyond the body-mind construct to deepen an understanding of human life, place it again within the cycle of nature and construct new ways of being, relating and telling.