Francesca likes to define herself as an eco-artivist or RUBBISH ARTIST.
Torn between optimism and surrender,she is haunted by the idea of
mankind’s imminent self-destruction. Yet, she believes in a future for
humanity of resourceful innovation through re-thinking, re-purposing and reducing.
It is this hope that is made visible through her work, which is composed
almost entirely of rubbish and ‘found’ material. Her art invites us to
reconsider the everyday, where we place value and how small changes
could make big impacts.
This shows particularly in her mosaics, mixed media and installations.
She thoroughly enjoys working within both the ethical and the material
limitations which this choice entails, working with material which often
take years to gather (be it from the street, a friend or her own bin).
They call for a constant and ingenuous shift in tools (ranging from
scissors to a saw, from wheel-cutters to hammer & hardie), adhesives
and arrangements: but every tessera she manages to create out of rubbish
makes it all worth it, as it is in itself a protest against the
disposable lifestyle we currently lead, and cries out the urgency she feels
for reminding us of our indissoluble interdependence with the ecosystem, and for a swift move to an all-encompassing circular economy.
Whilst keeping her carbon footprint to the bare minimum, it also allows her to provide a different perspective on
what society generally sees as rubbish: in Francesca's world rubbish acquires
new uses, value and meanings, and becomes the undisputed protagonist of her artworks, as fun and beautiful a Cinderella as she can master it to be. And this is what she believes sets her practice apart: using
rubbish as a true substitute of prime material and restoring its value
as the product of ingenious processes of transformation and employment
of precious resources, rather than as a mere demonstration of its abundance and abuse, and her capacity to transform it into unrecognizable tiles for her artworks.
Francesca hopes to inspire real change, however small, one small piece of rubbish at a time, and to bring us closer to the belief that
we need to move from an unsustainable anthropocentric society to one
focused on the whole eco-system, where actions are taken for the common
good of the whole eco-system.
LAYERED PHOTOGRAPHY
Francesca has recently resumed her fondness for photography,
which she decided to abandon before the digital era, due to the pollution
involved in development techniques.She is currently working on layered artwork, whereshe uses photography to create multi-layered messages which develop around her 3D artworks.
PAYMENT IN KIND(NESS)
In
May 2018 she launched the
Payment in Kind(ness) initiative,
whereby she accepts eco-friendly gestures (LiThs = “Little Things”) as payment in kind toward her artwork.
Ironically, her Little Things exhibition was censored within the first week of opening, as it was found to be “too controversial” by some of the estate residents.
ART for TRASH
Francesca recently launched her "Art for Trash" initiative, as part of what she named the "ArtWORKivism"
movement. The aim is to bring eco-artivism inside business offices, and
to stimulate ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS and RESPONSIBILITY in the
professional sphere, spreading the belief that they are pervasive and
necessary in all aspects of our lives. It involves the employees
collecting a selection of their office daily rubbish, which she then uses
to make an artwork for their office. The pilot project was run with Bluefield Partners,
a thriving business with strong ethical and environmental values, which
enthusiastically embraced the initiative in their London City office.
Francesca is happily available for pro bono collaborations with environmental organisations. Making the world a better place through art, in all possible ways, is her biggest hope.
