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.
Artist Statement
We are born somewhere, in a certain family, in a certain culture, in a state, a country, a city, a neighbourhood with a specific language and all other peculiarities that become intertwined with our being when we land on the planet. All of these are a reflection of our external bonds and reveal at the same time our freedom in relation to reality. As we journey throughout our life we are confronted with the stories we are being told, with fixed patterns of social behaviour and the structures that are holding everything in place. But what are the stories we tell ourselves? Can we re-imagine our narratives and re-invent the world? I believe that maintaining an active dialogue between our inner psychological realm and the outer world we can find a renewed connection to ourselves, the planet and other beings and re-claim the word ‘freedom’.
My artist practice navigates in this inner-outer dialogical osmotic space. Through sculpture, installation, sound and performance. I investigate intimately on different psychological and physical aspects of freedom, touching on themes such as belonging, migration, gender, mental health and environmental issues, working with the idea that the personal is always political.
Place also reveals our thinking and the existing paradigms that sustains it, it also reflects our external bonds. However we do have the ability to re-shape and re-mould it like sculpture material. Exercising together reflection and self-reflection we can create a space of exchange in which new understandings can emerge. We can come closer to what it is to be a human being, we can connect more deeply with the world and perhaps we can also develop transformative actions sustained by new values and forms of thinking.
Luisa is available for local and worldwide projects and collaborations as well as potential employment opportunities. Use the form to inquire about rates and availability, or just to say hi.