Art allows me to give this brain and heart a voice
Annamaria Pennazzi, collage and film artist once told me she used to dream in frames… When you’re constantly looking at film every day, your language develops as a film language so…Yeah I guess it creeps into the sub-conscious.
This is how Annamaria kicks off her interview with Smoor, she’s sitting at her desk in her new studio, which has sketches beneath her elbows and her work leaning up against its lemon yellow walls… Collage is putting the pieces together, just like in editing, it’s also the perfect off screen activity. Sometimes it’s great to come home after spending 12hrs of the day looking at 5 screens.
From the looks of things her art work isn’t so dreamy when it comes to her collages, as she usually begins with an organ in mind: It might be the brain or the heart lets say, and I try to dig inside to find the feeling from that specific body organ. This kind of exploration of anatomical emotion fascinates me, she explains that she wants to get what’s inside out, but what does that mean…
You really wanna know, it’s scary sometimes; we both laugh at what might be swirling around in her head. But before long, my attention is brought back to the collection of sketches dotted around, pink and yellow fluorescent postits clamber the wall all with scribbles on them, magazine cut outs pricked with drawing pins…and as I eye some of her work on display I see a gradient of colour drawing my eye down and across the collages. Does colour matter to her…. It’s very important to me that the colours match, and the feeling that that colour brings to the work. Yes. Annamaria certainly has a way of capturing the mood; her careful consideration where things are placed on a blank page seem purposeful -even if by explorative means. Seeing a tower of magazines stacked on the floor, I wonder what or who inspires her…
Leonora Carrington is a big inspiration, I read various books…sometimes I have an image in mind but no collage pieces, I use scientific resources from the internet, erm pornographic magazines, like Penthouse because the advertising is so interesting and I usually pick up magazines when I travel.
Is there a correlation between the film work and the art, or are they separate mediums for you… Oh definitely…. the short film I’m working on at the moment is called ‘The anatomy of anxiety’ and it’s about panic attacks, the protagonist of the film is made up of the organs of the human body.
Annamaria goes on to speak about how she’s suffered from her own panic attacks, anxiety and depression. I decided I wanted to make a comedy about it, I was also interested in looking at how each organ reacts when you have a panic attack, but in a comedic way.
With silence, fear and stigma that can surround mental health it’s a great way to break down some of those barriers, the more we talk, the more we learn, and like many pieces of art that has made an impact with others, can provoke tough conversations that aren’t being had; like abstract expressionist artist Rothko’s black and grey series, who famously suffered from depression. The Guerrilla girls who asked in 1989 ‘If all women had to be naked to get into the Met’ a feminist art collab exposing gender bias’s, the infamous Frida Kahlo, drew herself not only in her beauty but also in her pain…The list is endless. You can find beauty in something unconventional and a bit dark, which is what I like.
I can tell this film holds a lot of significance for Annamaria, I’m intrigued to see it once it hits our screens.
Next, I just have to ask about the deck of Tarot cards on her desk, it has been the elephant in the room for this entire interview … Oh yeah, I use the cards sometimes when I’m stuck. She gives me an example with some cut out pieces of brain, and clouds etc, with each decision she makes she asks the cards, it reminds me of a technique Merce Cunningham, a contemporary dance choreographer, sometimes used called chance choreography -I-ching- to decide on anything from the steps, speed, direction etc.
I’ve never heard of Tarot being used in this way for art but it must be liberating to give the power to the cards, when there’s a boulder in the way clouding your brain.
But what if the cards are wrong, is she afraid of making mistakes? I’m very wonky and clumsy and I love that this shows in my art work, she says of a bigger collage I’ve picked up in its frame. I don’t like perfection because nothing is perfect, that’s what I like to portray in my films too, I don’t mind mistakes…I know they bother some people.
Can you tell me more about the piece I’m holding?
I find it hard to talk about my stuff… but in this piece at the time, there was a lot going on in my love life, because my brain is close to where my vagina is – meaning I believe all of our organs are connected in some way and the vagina can interpret reality the same way a brain does (laughs). But I think there’s happiness and love in this piece and I think I was trying to make sense of what was going on at the time.
With all the things we’ve touched upon I’m excited to see what her exhibition ‘A taste and the aftertaste: Immersive journey into Annamaria Pennazzi’s art’ has in store. However, what I do know is that she’s not keen on the barriers a conventional exhibition provides. I’d love to make art and film that people can interact with, I want people to touch it to feel it I want people to create a discussion around it…I want people to get involved and feel like they can make it their own, it’s not just mine, it’s for the world to enjoy.
If you’d like to see more of Annamaria’s work, her exhibitionwill be on At Odyssey- Hoxton, 6-9:30pm, 28th November 2024.
Maybe I’ll see you there, or not, let me see what the cards have to say first.
