Contributor Spotlight: Federica Colletti

Our Spotlight series introduces you to the people behind Perennial Press. In this post, we hear from force / fields contributor and visual artist Federica Colletti. Colletti talks to us about (not) making a living through art, virtual art events, and leaves us with her favorite poem by Wislawa Szymborska.

Do you make a living from your art/writing? If not, what else do you do?

Born as a passion, at the moment I don’t earn my living through it, but I can also get something out of it from a material point of view thanks to both live and remote collaborations and online sales. Not much yet, however I never thought I’d succeed because it was never my purpose and only later did it become a possible goal. 

In addition to this, I am about to graduate in psychology (a specialist in the branch of communication and marketing). Who knows that the two roads, together with other interests, may not find a way to unite in a single great project. Or that they both simply unfold in the best possible way and continue to walk parallel.

Have you been going to any online creative events during quarantine? 

Although live events were at a standstill, I participated in two online exhibitions, the last of which was in collaboration with the startup Staiy and is still visible on the Artsteps platform. The exhibition includes the works of 30 artists from all over the globe and focuses on ecology and sustainability, themes that are the pillars of the project itself. 

The other exhibition is by the artistic collective of Rome Artistsgowild and the concept was change and dialogue with nature. 

As real online events I think I have participated only in these, but for the rest I collaborated as a contributor in the creation of the book “The age of collage” by the Gestalten publishing house and with some magazines and zines from the United States, Canada, India, UK (like Visio Mag, Lucent dreaming, Vaine Mag and others!). 

I love to communicate with people from all over the world and between those who sent me private messages and those who sent me a copy of the final work at home, I felt a lot of positive energy being released despite the physical distance that has accompanied us in this pandemic. 

Last but not least, I created the cover of a musical album by wonderfully crazy artists (Lord Gen’o and Le Paul White, that I wish to great!) which will soon be released in its full version. 

How do you stay creative during quarantine?

My creativity draws from every state of mind, feeling and lived experience translated into images through allegories and visual metaphors. Therefore, it would be difficult to remain without it even if I were locked in a room alone on the top of a mountain! You are never emotionless.
Then, by playing with your imagination, you can invent. And if reality has an end, what does not exist is infinite.

Did you go to school for writing / art? 

I didn’t attend artistic studies, but the psychology faculty greatly influenced my style and the creative process through free associations. I started more than three years ago (almost four … how time flies!) as a self-taught artist. On the one hand, I was looking for a way to narrate some wounds of the past, reshaping them according to the filters of the present. I chose an artistic form that lends itself to making nightmares bloom, that uses them as fertilizer to plant the roots of future dreams. And that it was non-verbal. A compromise between exposure and confidentiality.
In the end, from being a medium, art has become the dream itself.

Leave us with your favorite poem.

“Autotomy” by Wislawa Szymborska