“I think painting is a paradoxical enigma, because it does not want to reveal any absolute truth, it does not ask for any answers”
AT: Where are you from and how/why did you start engaging with art? When did it become serious?
LA: I was born and raised in Milan. As a young child I used to spend a lot of time drawing. It is actually the very first thing I ever considered serious in my life. I remember that sort of magical feeling; what is more serious for a child than magic?
AT: Are there any person who has been significant in your breakthrough as an artist?
LA: There are a lot of people significant for my art, whether near or far. I think every artistic practice composes and expands itself thanks to continuous encounters; physical or spiritual, real or imaginary meetings.
AT: What is your first approach to the work? How would you describe your practice? What are your favourite tools and materials for working?
LA: I paint and draw. The first approach is always an accumulation of photographic material; I always paint from photographs because it leads me into a layering and erasure process where the images follow each other on the surface. The urge to paint springs from a thin stream of desire coming from images and from their imaginative potential.
“Abbracciando la tua ombra le mie ossa si inarcavano come fiori” (detail), 2020.
AT: Where does the inspiration for the work come from?
LA: I always find the inspiration in the continuous tension between something obvious and enigmatic at the same time. The books I read have a great impact on my works and titles, just as much as what I do in painting affects the way I look at things of my everyday life. Art is a continuous exchange between inside and outside, depth and surface.
AT: Do you leave your work open to interpretation? Or do you think the viewer should engage with your work in a specific way?
LA: The strength of painting dwells in having no claims; I think painting is a paradoxical enigma, because it does not want to reveal any absolute truth, it does not ask for any answers.
AT: What do you feel while you work? Do you usually think about the final outcome beforehand?
LA: Every time there is a different kind of urgency. Sometimes a started painting needs a long time to rest and different levels before it is actually finished, other times everything is focused in a unique vision that is exhausted in the fluidity of a single session. Of course I think about possible final results, but during the process I need to let the images freely enter the work and to go with momentary intuitions.
“Bianchi re”, oil on linen, 70×90 cm, 2019.
“Orribili gladioli”, oil on linen, 70×90 cm, 2019.
AT: Are there any artists who influenced your works? Why?
LA: I constantly receive influences, both belonging to the past and to the present; sometimes I need to forget them to meet them again in my own work.
AT: How important is the role of social media for you?
LA: I use Instagram a lot! I like to create my profile through fragments.
AT: As an artist, what is your point of view about the contemporary art system?
LA: I think as an artist you should be very much aware of everything, but at the same time you should keep the right distance to remain sincere.
“Alba del cervo”, oil on linen, 60×80 cm, 2019.
“Amata trappola (II)”, oil on jute, 20×30 cm, 2019.
AT: What do you find to be the most challenging or daunting thing about pursuing art? What is the most rewarding part of working as an artist?
LA: An aspect that could be daunting is the sense of precariousness. Therefore, making art assumes a continuous act of faith; I do not mean that as an unconditional and passive trust, but a continuous questioning, a dynamic and changing faith. It makes your eyes sensitive to worldly things but it leads to continuous oscillations. I think it is a challenging and rewarding aspect of making art; what is more exciting than the feeling of emerging from a crisis?
AT: What do you do besides art?
LA: Look at the answer number 4.
AT: What are your goals and expectations for the future?
LA: At the moment, my goal for the near future is to stay focused.
Studio view | ph. Alecio Ferrari.
Ludovica Anversa (b. 1996) is an Italian painter currently living and working in Milan, Italy. In her work, the pictorial practice is given through a process of stratifications and erasures that leads the images to follow one another on the surface in a continuous exchange between presences and absences. Opening up different interpretative margins, her research investigates the possibility of a vision that oscillates between attraction and repulsion, sensuality and restlessness, familiar and unknown, in which painting explores memory by putting its clear and comprehensible side into dialogue with its more ambiguous and visceral side.
