The latest from Giulia Bongiovanni is called “ANTI-NOCTRA” and stands for “anti nationality; nationality”; it is a stunning five-panel series depicting the life of an average woman. The title simply says it all, and the five panels are color-coded to show the person’s birth date, nationality (country), place of birth, mother’s name, father’s name, and profession. It is truly an original artwork that depicts the typical woman of our times in her everyday surroundings.
Her pieces often focus on her own personal observations of women, and how they act, communicate, and live in their day to day lives. The common denominator with all her artwork is her sharp sense of perception and her penchant for capturing the human condition in all its complexity. Her subjects have historically ranged from death, romance, birth, pregnancy, childhood, adolescence, beauty, and intelligence. No other artist works so precisely on so many different human subjects in such a comprehensive and concentrated manner. And all this while keeping within the realm of body art that she is so proficient in.
Bongiovani has a background in drawing and studied sculpture, painting, and printmaking under both Italian and American artists. She has worked with well-known fashion designers such as Dior’s John Galliano, and has been a professional artist for the past 27 years. Her recent series “ANTI-NOCTRA” stands for “anti nationality; nationality;” and was designed to highlight the ongoing battles being fought across the world to preserve traditional national identities, values, and cultures. In an increasingly globalized world where much of humanity lives in similar environments, we all tend to lose sight of who we really are and fall into the constant deluge of mass media advertising which bombards us with messages of uniformity. We are constantly inundated with information from people who speak nothing more than a different language and who live in vastly different lands and cultures; and as a consequence, much of the vitality of authentic art tends to get lost in the noise.