Rita Casdia

Born in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (Messina) in 1977. Lives in Milan and Terme Vigliatore (Me)

Rita Casdia's artistic research moves through different expressive means, ranging from the more traditional crafts of painting, drawing, and engraving to her more recent use of photography and video. Different languages are often presented as complementary elements in the same installation. The protagonists of her work are small dolls she makes out of Plasticine and encloses in jars or sets in photographs of vaguely defined landscapes. They are given the task of portraying varied psychological states, such as nostalgia, the fear of abandonment, and the often turbulent relationships with the opposite sex. The complex dynamics between men and women are frequently the subject of her videos and drawings, the latter of which are made with gel ink on paper and are extremely synthetic and essential in their line and content. Casdia also works, at times ironically, with elements taken from childhood fantasy, which can be simple to follow or highly stratified in meaning. (A.T.)