Mental Meteorites series

Mental Meteorites is the result of several changes in the working process of the artist. After years of working in outdoor locations, she returned to the studio to produce her new photographic series. She also decided to use a high-quality digital camera for the first time after working all her career in large and medium analogical format. These changes have permitted the artist to transform her usual method of production and renew her creative process.

For this series, Piaggio delved into her personal archive to make a selection of photographs in different formats (35mm, 6x6, and 4x5) left over from unrealized projects, travels, and everyday life. These photographs have been mounted on color papers, intervened with multiple colorful dry pigments, and then rephotographed by the artist to produce the final work.

Through this process Piaggio enters a direct relationship with the material, focusing in a more formal aesthetic research and opening a new path in her work. By revealing the bent, twisted, or damaged paper, the shadows and reflections of light, she foregrounds the material properties of the support with which she has traditionally worked. At the same time, the artist’s formal experimentation is balanced by the strongly personal character of her imagery. Her close connection with the chosen images is palpable and imparts an autobiographical flavor to the series.

All the dry pigments have different natures and react in distinct ways. It is impossible to repeat the gesture, to generate the same result every time. Hence each combination of the intention and the randomly material behavior produces a unique outcome that takes its place in concert with the others in the series create an intimate and compelling universe.