Anna Madia's Paintings
Anna Madia is a contemporary Italian artist. In 1976, he graduated in Painting from the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. She was a finalist in the Cairo Prize in 2006 and the National Portrait Gallery's British Portrait Award in 2007. In 2008, she received the Italian Cultural Institute's Renaissance Prize in London, as well as the La Fenice et des Artistes Prize in Venice. In 2009, she received a research scholarship as a tutor at the Academy of Turin, and in 2010, she was given an atelier at the Ginkgo Contemporary Art Center in Troyes, France.
"My profession is portraiture, and I mostly paint self-portraits." Literature and theater have had the most impact on me. Some of the characters I've chosen to celebrate in my art are Ophelia, Alice in Wonderland, and The Girl Without an Arm. Sleep and coma are currently major parts in a new series called Sleepwalking. My family had a yearly tradition of washing wool mattresses: every part of the house was flooded with the smooth, creamy stuff, and I spent hours playing with it and visualizing snow-capped peaks and strange mountain ledges.
Today, this practice is a rite of love and freedom from the metaphorical "stigmata" of restless nights, nightmares, and infirmity: the bed is transformed again into a bed where a new cycle begins. Cotton wool, napkins, and hair serve as portals into this realm that is "stuck" between reality and dreams. While researching sleepwalking and other diseases (narcolepsy, hypnosis, and hypnopompic hallucinations), I began to experiment with a different form of portrait: veiled faces, drooping eyes, and intriguing scenarios in which personal hallucinations develop and disappear."
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