Venetian by birth, Federica Palmarin grew up between Italy and Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, and this is not a negligible detail, because the curiosity and creativity that transpire from her work tell about a DNA linked to Travel, to the knowledge of cultures, people, souls of the world
Nonconformist par excellence, lover of beauty in its broadest sense, Federica Palmarin passions range between Photography and Art, it is no coincidence that he decided to open her own Gallery in Venice “Venice Faktory
I preferred to ask her questions and let her tell her story, because, however much I may transcribe her thought, no one like Federica Palmarin is able to transmit her ego.
When did you understand that photography would come into your life?
At around 18 years of age thanks to some mentors, I met the great masters of photography who were inspired by some choices of studies that I made. In the following, Dianne Arbus, Nan Goldin, were important in my training.
Traveling and telling through the photographic language in its iconic and circumstantial value, iconic in the sense of resemblance to reality and circumstantial in its being a trace.
What are you trying to convey through your shots?
I look for the Unknown, the anthropocentrism of the human being, the archetype and the work of art already present in the human and in the real by conducting the investigation objectively, interfering as little as possible.
What field experience do you carry in your heart and why?
One of the latest projects was carried out in Malawi, an anthropological research on the masks of a secret society of the Chewa Tribe called Nyao reinterpreted by the same subjects portrayed, sometimes with elements of mass western culture thus creating a sort of Coldsplay, a representation Other of the Self.
In Malawi when members of certain tribes wear the mask, they lose their identity as a man, and sometimes perform actions justified precisely by the use of the mask but unjustified from the human point of view. When denounced for improper or violent actions, they defend themselves with the appeal to the First Amendment which provides for freedom of worship and religion.
One of the experiences that I carry in my heart, in pain in my heart, has been to go to Cambogia in the extermination camps during the actions of Pol Pot, in the Tuol Slang Genocide Museum, in Phnom Phenm and fix the empty looks of thousands of Skulls ,
What made you want to open an art gallery?
Censorship and the will to collaborate with contemporary artists.
The experience in the editorial and artistic fields has led me to often deal with censorship.
And it was precisely the will to break that censorship and collaborate with Artists in which prompted me to found Venice Faktory
What do you think of contemporary art?
We have always found the foundations of contemporaneity even in the great Masters of the past; but now we are at the beginning of the New World, and I find extremely interesting what we are witnessing as a transformation in the artistic field, what we have just called Contemporary, belongs to the old World, in a certain sense it will be privileged to have lived both.
