Born 1982 in Lecce, Italy, Alessia studied first at the University of Perugia to obtain her BA and made then a Master in “Creative Photography” at the Escuela de Fotografia y Cine (EFTI – School for Photography and Cinema) in Madrid, Spain. She frequented the State University in Milan, Italy for her Master in Publishing. Besides her studies, she participated in many workshops with international artists like Peter Funch, Mauricio Alejo, Denis Darzacq, Jill Greenberg, Matt Siber, James Casebere and Mary Ellen Mark. Additionally, she was selected for the international Default – Masterclass residency in 2011 and the MO.ta residency in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2013. In 2019 and 2020, she had residencies at the Italian Cultural Institute in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and participated in 2019 in the project “European Eyes on Japan” in Mashiko.
Since 2010, Alessia had several solo exhibitions, mainly in Spain, but also in Brazil, Italy and Japan. Moreover, she participated in many group shows. At the beginning of her carrier, the focus was in Spain. Nevertheless, in the last years her works were as well on view in Italy, Netherlands (Unseen Amsterdam), France (Arles Cosmos) and England (Lens Culture Award, London Photo). Outside Europe, her works were presented in Brazil (Galeria Mascate), Shanghai (Shanghai Photofestival) and Ethiopia (Addis Foto Fest).
Alessia’s first photos were still life’s, close to Italian renaissance painting. After a period of experimenting with different techniques and combining diverse genres, her work became more conceptual. She creates series by investigating an issue from various angles, with the result that the single shooting gets its importance mainly in context with the associated photos. This becomes evident in her series “Fata Morgana”, where our artwork of the month February 2019 is taken from. Here she is questioning the ambiguous image of her home region Salento between reality and appearance.
With her series “Parallel Eyes” from 2019, Alessia focussed once more on the south of Italy. She photographed ancient practices of the region, which have lost their original meaning by the time and became popular festivals with a commercial purpose. The photo “The Burning Saint” from this series, presents the Focara of Novoli and is our artwork of the month January 2023. As exhibition “Parallel Eyes” travelled in 2021 to Tirana, Albany, Bari and Lecce and in 2022 to Athens, Greece.
In 2018, Fata Morgana was on view, in Tokyo, Japan, in Nigni Tagil, Russia and in Monopoli, Italy and in 2020 in the Italian Embassy in Madrid. The Spanish editor Ediciones Anómalas released a photobook of the project in March 2019. Her series “Dialoghi Italiani” was also published as book in 2018, where Alessia enquired about photography itself and the loss or change of meaning in an image, when the original context is no longer available. Earlier series questioned about changing eating habits (Happy Meal and We eat what we are) or depicted unusual arrangements at home (In Domestico).
Alessia lives and works in Lecce.