Rabarama - The Worlds Sculptress

The daughter of an artist, from her early childhood she showed an inborn talent for sculpture. She started her artistic education at the Arts High School in Treviso, and continued later at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts. She graduated with top marks in 1991 and immediately started taking part in a large number of national and international sculpture competitions, earning growing acclaim with both the critics and the general public alike.

Rabarama creates sculptures and paintings with men, women or hybrid creatures, often passing for the eccentric. The skin of the subject created by the artist is always decorated with symbols, letters, hieroglyphics and other figures in a variety of forms. The "membrane", the "cloak" that seems to envelop these figures is constantly changing, always adding new signs, symbols and metaphors. The alphabet indicates the internal restriction of language and our singular-plural entity (according to the conception of the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy): hieroglyphics, puzzles and honeycombs are the visualization of the genome, the infinite combinations and possible varieties inherent in humanity, displayed in the mental mazes where is materialized the multifaceted complexity of the ego. Often exhibitions of Rabarama's works are presented in collaboration with other artists, performers (body painting, dancers, acrobats) and are enriched by video projections and sound. Her work is considered suggestive and exciting, describes all the sorrows and joys of the human being, from slavery to freedom, through the genetic code of dreams.

What inspires your work? How do you come up with new ideas?

I always start with a concept in my mind that I need to communicate to the rest of the world. For me, creating sculptures is my own way to speak and give form to thoughts and emotions. Then, when I start modelling the clay, all I feel begins to flow in it, so the position of the body and the engravings I have chosen are interconnected, in order to give form to my personal message.

Your work is all based upon the human body - what is it about this form that interests you? Do your subjects' personalities and experiences affect your interpretations?

I believe that the human body is in itself a form capable of communicating, through its positions, content, as well as beauty and harmony. My art speaks mainly of research related to our self-awareness and the search for the sense of existence, so in this sense the human body is the perfect canvas to tell all this. Obviously, it is a subjective choice, linked to personal experience, and for me the most direct way to express what I feel is the use of the human figure and how it interacts with space.

Your most recent exhibition was focused on skin art - in fact all of your sculptures are decorated. How do you decide which patterns and symbols to use on your sculptures?  

Each sculpture tells of my experience, a thought or part of my research path; through the symbols and drawings that I trace on the skin of my creatures, I try to communicate these aspects at times, which can be related to life, travel, what we feel within ourselves and how we relate to it and to others. Observing and studying the symbols not only one by one but as a whole, it is possible to reach a precise message.

Your work involves male and female bodies - apart from basic biology what differences and similarities do you find in each form? Does your understanding of male and female experience affect your work? 

Surely, I think they both have in common harmony and beauty. The use of the male body rather than the feminine body indicates my will to convey a concept with a different intensity: this can be translated into the use of a male body in the expression of a force-related concept, while the feminine is compatible with sweetness and softness.

Your sculptures are often posed in unusual and eye catching ways - how do you decide how each sculpture should be posed? 

I have a great interest in yoga and the search for lines that concentrate energies at certain points. This is evident to those who know and follow my work for many years, having been able to observe the various research periods, and it is also visible by looking at everything around us, often infused with this energy that seeks to find its utmost expression. Obviously, choosing for a position rather than another is linked to the relationship between what has been said so far and the concept I want to express through the sculpture I am creating.

You come from an Italian background and yet a lot of your work seems to be inspired by Eastern/Asian culture. How did this interest evolve?

My approach to Asian cultures has been through my travels to China, where I have been able to know and appreciate millenarian philosophies where energy has a strong influence on the human being. My research has therefore moved towards inner consciousness and the universe, which is also the fulcrum of these philosophies. I still use the symbols of the I-Ching rather than the Mandala to convey the positivity and the very strong concepts that they can express.