ITA - ENG
MAY 2020
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Kezia Terraciano, alias Keziat, is an Apulian artist who has explored many forms of expression in her career: from painting, comics and illustration to video and performance. The emotional charge and the strong sense of imagination has made the works of this visionary artist, known and appreciated all over the world, of profound importance in her art.
Website: https://www.keziat.net
All images © courtesy of Keziat
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I read in an interview that you started dedicate to drawing as a child and that it's a passion that has continued to grow with you. But when did you decide to dedicate yourself completely to your artistic career? Was it a natural decision you heard over time or did it happen following a particular episode?
I would say yes, I started as a child and I went on and on, choosing what to be gradually when I grow up. It was certainly a decision matured day after day that led me to follow certain paths, sometimes risky and crazy but which over time were the right results.
Your art is expressed through different means, you have explored many but there is something that you have not yet had the opportunity to experience, something you feel could be the next evolution?
One of the characteristics of a creative artist is the ability to evolve over time; experimentation is important to look for new languages in which you can recognize yourself. I don't know what my next evolution (or revolution) could be, it is difficult to understand it rationally. It is about having intuitions that push you in an unexpected direction and these intuitions are not predictable and calculated at all.
The world you represent is rich of dreamlike scenarios, full of imagination. How does your creative process start? What inspires you?
I'm a dreamer. The escape from reality inspires me, starting from real life but transfiguring it and showing its hidden sides. The creative process, therefore, often arises from a personal story or from a world view that I would like to tell. Thus emerge images of armless women floating in the air, strong and protective mothers, a world of childhood lost and never forgotten, of invisible figures that are perceived, of cities overcrowded and populated by beings who are fundamentally alone.
In your career you have often had the opportunity to exhibit your work abroad. How do you live this experience? Are the artistic panoramas you have visited different?
It is always very stimulating to exhibit abroad because we measure ourselves with a different audience, with different cultures and often create fascinating interactions. In 2018, for example, in collaboration with the violinist Luca Ciarla and some dancers of the South African company Dark Room Contemporary we presented a multidisciplinary performance in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the performance space of William Kentridge. And so it was also in the United States (Washington DC, New York, Miami, San Francisco) in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur) where I found incredible enthusiasm and where other interesting projects were often born. I have always noticed an extraordinary professionalism in the artistic field both in private galleries and in public spaces. There is an attention to art in general and perhaps even more meritocratic, if you are worth work. In Italy, this is not always the case but fortunately there are exceptions.
In Music For Your Eyes you created a performance that involved multiple artistic disciplines. What do you think this interaction with other artists has brought in the single performance and in general in your way of making art?
Music for Your Eyes is an encounter between different languages that create points of contact in a common space. It is a site-specific project in which music and visual arts create a symmetrical union in which dance and theater are often added. It is a project conceived by the violinist Luca Ciarla in which I dived headlong because I immediately understood the potential. It is like creating new synapses, amplifying one's perception through other channels. I find that working with other artists is a fantastic opportunity to grow from an artistic point of view and beyond. Thanks to these interactions I had the intuition, for example, of working with videos, of studying software suitable for the project and also of transforming some ideas into a video installation.
Do yo have any advice you would give to young emerging artists, maybe something that you wish they had given you at the beginning of your career?
The only advice that comes to mind is to have infinite patience and self-confidence.
How are you experiencing this period with the lockdown?
Artists are used to living "inmates" for some periods or even during a single day, when they work on their projects, so I'm dedicating a lot of my time to creating new works and developing new projects.
Observing your works it seems that a series of contrasts combine them all: the simplicity of the stroke of the pen opposed to the intensity of the feelings and states of mind expressed; reality and supernatural; fantasy, vision and concreteness of the external world. What do you want to express, is there something that connects your works?
Contrasts are part of life: joy and pain, life and death, everything we know has its opposite and when I tell the reality around me I like to represent it through all its facets and contradictions. For this reason I often insert disturbing or smiling elements, even in the same work. The goal is to tell life with images, to make myself and those who observe my works reflect and excite. In addition, through this process of contrast I highlight some aspects that would otherwise be invisible.
Thank you for your availability and for the time spent on the interview.
Thank you too
