Caterina De Nicola
Caterina De Nicola (1991, Italy) lives and works in Zürich, Switzerland. In her practice she resorts to theory-fiction, sound investigation and object design, to shape formal and discursive patterns, by developing an analysis of cultural symbols and motifs, as well as their circulation in a larger cultural system. From music industry’s pick-and-mix tactics to the fashion continuous recycling of symbols, the theory of normalisation becomes a recurring mechanism through which generic images-symbols allow us to feel part of a common and undifferentiated social environment, and social bonds get dissolved into a staging of community under the premises of commodities, pleasure, and taste. In this context saturated with the idea of individuality, “The impossibility of differentiation” becomes a tool to inquire about the status of objects.
After obtaining a Bachelor degree at Brera Academy in Milan, she took part in the CSAV at Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como. In 2018 she accomplished a Master degree at ECAL in Lausanne, where, after being active ad event organiser and DJ together with local emerging actors galvanising the local scene, she has been invited to take part to Les Urbaines festival. In 2018 she took part in the CASTRO studio program in Rome. Recent exhibitions include Whispering Walls (Last Tango, Zurich), Sommer des Zögerns (Kunsthalle Zürich), Surgeons and Gluttons (Palazzina, Basel), Embarrassed and conciliatory, bored and noncommittally (Il Colorifcio, Milano), Café Spit (Galerie PCP, Paris), Crisis of Glass Bell (TANK, Basel), Capriccio 2000 (Fondazione Sandretto, Torino), Le ciel, l’eau, les dauphins, la vierge, les fics, le sang des nobles, l’ONU, l’Europe, les casques bleus, Facebook, Twitter (Forde, Geneva), Bay Wetter (Wishing Well, Lausanne), Ending Explained (Le DOC, Paris).
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Fig. 1. Caterina De Nicola, installation view, Moxette’s Crazy, Stupid Love, 2020, Wooden
frame, laminated plywood, screws, nails, bricolage varnish, Schtroumpf
spandex fabric, spray paint, 46 x 72 x 9 cm, photo by Kilian Bannwart,
Courtesy of Last Tango
Fig. 2. Caterina De Nicola, installation view, Can Subjectivity Be Used as a Tool to Build Theory?, 2020,
Rat prop, shredded pages, plastic bag, wrappings, tights, wax, fake hair, plastic, variable dimensions, photo by Kilian Bannwart.
Courtesy of Last Tango
Fig. 3. Caterina De Nicola, performance documentation, Embarassed and conciliatory, bored and noncommittally, 2019, Performance, urine, chairs, 40 min. loop, photo by Alessandro Sellini,
Courtesy of Il Colorificio
Courtesy of Last Tango
Fig. 2. Caterina De Nicola, installation view, Can Subjectivity Be Used as a Tool to Build Theory?, 2020,
Rat prop, shredded pages, plastic bag, wrappings, tights, wax, fake hair, plastic, variable dimensions, photo by Kilian Bannwart.
Courtesy of Last Tango
Fig. 3. Caterina De Nicola, performance documentation, Embarassed and conciliatory, bored and noncommittally, 2019, Performance, urine, chairs, 40 min. loop, photo by Alessandro Sellini,
Courtesy of Il Colorificio