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Dionysian Feast was a seven-act performative dinner hosted at The Grey Space in the Middle in The Hague. Centered on the figure of Dionysus, the project brought together food, performance, scenography, and mythological storytelling in an immersive ritual setting. For the project, I created seven hand-painted fabric panels, each measuring approximately 4 x 2 metres, which formed the scenographic structure of the evening. These textile paintings presented my own interpretation of the myth and transformed the space into a theatrical environment. Across the seven acts, different performances unfolded alongside the dinner, combining movement, image, atmosphere, and collective eating. The project explored Dionysus as a figure of ecstasy, transformation, excess, and social release
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Dionysian Feast was a seven-act performative dinner hosted at The Grey Space in the Middle in The Hague. Centered on the figure of Dionysus, the project brought together food, performance, scenography, and mythological storytelling in an immersive ritual setting. For the project, I created seven hand-painted fabric panels, each measuring approximately 4 x 2 metres, which formed the scenographic structure of the evening. These textile paintings presented my own interpretation of the myth and transformed the space into a theatrical environment. Across the seven acts, different performances unfolded alongside the dinner, combining movement, image, atmosphere, and collective eating. The project explored Dionysus as a figure of ecstasy, transformation, excess, and social release
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Dionysian Feast was a seven-act performative dinner hosted at The Grey Space in the Middle in The Hague. Centered on the figure of Dionysus, the project brought together food, performance, scenography, and mythological storytelling in an immersive ritual setting. For the project, I created seven hand-painted fabric panels, each measuring approximately 4 x 2 metres, which formed the scenographic structure of the evening. These textile paintings presented my own interpretation of the myth and transformed the space into a theatrical environment. Across the seven acts, different performances unfolded alongside the dinner, combining movement, image, atmosphere, and collective eating. The project explored Dionysus as a figure of ecstasy, transformation, excess, and social release
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Samhain Feast was an eight-act performative dinner developed around Celtic mythology, folklore, and the ritual origins of contemporary Halloween. The project took Samhain as a moment of transition: the night between harvest and winter, life and death, the visible and invisible world. For the project, I created a large scenographic environment with 21 hand-painted panels, each measuring approximately 3 x 1.5 metres. These paintings formed an immersive setting for the feast, surrounding the audience with a changing ritual landscape. Food, scenography, performance, sound, and collective eating came together in a sequence of acts inspired by myth, seasonal transformation, ancestral presence, and the symbolic crossing between worlds. The dinner was conceived not as a conventional meal, but as a theatrical and communal ritual. Through edible sculptures, staged courses, and hand-painted surroundings, the audience entered a temporary world where folklore, material craft, and food became part of the same narrative experience.
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Samhain Feast was an eight-act performative dinner developed around Celtic mythology, folklore, and the ritual origins of contemporary Halloween. The project took Samhain as a moment of transition: the night between harvest and winter, life and death, the visible and invisible world. For the project, I created a large scenographic environment with 21 hand-painted panels, each measuring approximately 3 x 1.5 metres. These paintings formed an immersive setting for the feast, surrounding the audience with a changing ritual landscape. Food, scenography, performance, sound, and collective eating came together in a sequence of acts inspired by myth, seasonal transformation, ancestral presence, and the symbolic crossing between worlds. The dinner was conceived not as a conventional meal, but as a theatrical and communal ritual. Through edible sculptures, staged courses, and hand-painted surroundings, the audience entered a temporary world where folklore, material craft, and food became part of the same narrative experience.
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Prearation of the panels in my studio
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Edible landscape event, performed in December 2024 in Florence
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Eetbaar landschapsevenement, uitgevoerd in Juni 2024 in Den haag
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sugar sculpture at Museum Beelden aan Zee
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video extract from my performance as Gravy River in Umbria, Italy
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De oude vruchten van de boomarcheologie, bewakers van tijd en herinnering Il Tempo Ritrovato is een tentoonstelling gericht op het bewonen en promoten van de plek waar de Stichting Arboreal Archaeology is gevestigd en op het starten van een hedendaagse reflectie over de kwesties van het milieu, de samenleving en de biodiversiteit. Op woensdag 21 juni, ter gelegenheid van de zomerzonnewende, vond de eerste acte van de tentoonstelling plaats met de multidisciplinaire kunstenaar mattia papp / jusriver
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De oude vruchten van de boomarcheologie, bewakers van tijd en herinnering Il Tempo Ritrovato is een tentoonstelling gericht op het bewonen en promoten van de plek waar de Stichting Arboreal Archaeology is gevestigd en op het starten van een hedendaagse reflectie over de kwesties van het milieu, de samenleving en de biodiversiteit. Op woensdag 21 juni, ter gelegenheid van de zomerzonnewende, vond de eerste acte van de tentoonstelling plaats met de multidisciplinaire kunstenaar mattia papp / jusriver
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Middernachtzomerdroom geïnspireerd eetbaar landschap, gehost in The Grey Space in het midden
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theater piece created appositely for ZAAl3, Den haag
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first work of my series VIDEOTABERNACOLI
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Museum Beelden aan Zee AFTERHOURS promo
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meermanno museun
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Websites
Social media
Curriculum vitae
Education
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2013 - 2017painting Den Haag, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten diploma
exhibitions
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2025SOTTOBOSCO Galleria OBJETS London, United Kingdom Sottobosco was my exhibition at Galleria Objets in London in 2025. The project brought together my ceramic series with an edible landscape performance, turning the gallery into an undergrowth-like environment of roots, moss, fungi, insects, reptiles, and sculptural fragments. The works explored the forest floor as a place of decay, transformation, and regeneration, where ceramics and food became part of the same living landscape. Solo
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2024Mythopeia FORNACIAI ART GALLERY Florence, Italy Duo show based featuring ceramic sculptures dealing with themes of mythology and alchemic reactions. Duo
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2024Books as Meermanno museum Den Haag, Netherlands 2 performative events with Tang ha and Celien Hurka, usign food as a emdium to explore the collection of Meermanno museum in Den Haag Group
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2024AFTERHOURS NOVEMBER 2024 Museum BAZ Den Haag, Netherlands The Grey Space in the Middle is more than just a venue in The Hague; it is a living experiment where art, music, digital culture, food, science and ideas come together. On November 1st, it moves to the Beelden aan Zee museum for one evening, where future residents from its multidisciplinary artist-in-residence program will perform among the sculptures of Joan Miró, and where artist Mattia Papp will serve an edible artwork among the plaster casts of Jean Arp. stappenindenhaag.nl/2024/08/01/museum-beelden-aan-zee-lanceert-after-hours/ Group
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2023ATLANTIS, Mattia Papp NIO House Rotterdam, Netherlands development of the series of works from the ATLANTIS project Solo
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2023Prospects VAN NELLE FACTORY, ART ROTTERDAM Rotterdam, Netherlands exhibition of all the 2021 recipients of mondriaan fonds. I have presented an installation with 35 artworks that retrace the fictional discovery of the lost empire of Atlantis Group
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2023Edible Landscape: Dream The Grey Space in the middle The Hague, Netherlands In overeenstemming met het idee om voeding van de aarde te krijgen, bestaat het menu uit lokaal geproduceerde en biologische ingrediënten, met de nadruk op vers fruit, groenten en kruiden. Geïnspireerd door de scène die wordt afgebeeld in "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" - het schilderij van Édouard Manet - heb ik een ruimte gecreëerd waar gasten kunnen ontspannen en genieten van hun maaltijd op dekens en kussens te midden van planten, bomen en bloemen. Solo
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2022“Seven ways to compassion” GROTE KERK The Hague Series realized in ceramic and porcelain for the Lutheran Church of the Netherlands. Each work represents a reinterpretation of the biblical theme of seven acts of mercy. Solo
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2022” Memories from the future” 98 GALLERY The Hague, Netherlands Exhibition with the body of works "MURI" Solo
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2022EDIBLE LANDSCAPE 3 Utrecht, Netherlands Edible landscape performance for Greative Coders Utrecht event Solo
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2022Imergente Festival CASA70 Lisbon, Portugal edible landscape in the context of IMEREGENTE festival Group
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2022Cornucopia CASTELNUOVO CASTLE Chianti, Italy Edible landscape Solo
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2022“Tactilis” GALERIE HELDER The Hague, Netherlands group show with works focused on the tactile quality of materials Group
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2021EDIBLE LANDSCAPE 1 he Grey Space in the Middle The Hague, Netherlands First edible landscape I have ever realized Solo
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2020SALUS PER AQUAM Numeroventi Florence, Italy a show about Atlantis and its traces numeroventi.it/daylight-opening/ Solo
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2020
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2019Human concrete Boogieland Amsterdam, Netherlands pop expo featuring works of big dimensions. Group
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2018The living Museum Westgastefabriek Amsterdam, Netherlands 3 days openlocation tour. each room of the exhibition had an artist with site specific installation or performance Group
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2018Traces of personal presence Twelve Twelve Gallery The Hague Groepsshow Group
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2018The diptic of faith BỦREAU DEGRADE The Hague, Netherlands all night performance, 12 hours non stop painting replicas of details from the walls Of S.Spirito church in Florence , while a dutch artist Teun Wolters was performing in front of the forementioned church www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q2tUzGsUN8&ab_channel=LabelD%C3%A9grad%C3%A9 Duo
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2017Cables and Spears KABK The Hague, Netherlands graduation show project, installation with painting and video work Group
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2017Under One Sky Santa Caterina church, Lucca, Italy Lucca, Italy Installation with sound painting and grass, for the manifestation mattiapapp.com/UNDER-ONE-SKY Solo
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2017Dating NOUVELLES IMAGES GALLERY The Hague, Netherlands groupshow Group
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2017Best of graduates group show Jerusalem Chapel Gouda, Netherlands Best of graduates group show Group
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2017SANAA Gallery Utrecht, Netherlands group show Group
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2016CRYSTAL MAZE BINCHORST The Hague, Netherlands Groupshow as exam for the first semester of graduation year, fine arts Group
Projects
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2026
Etruskisch midzomerfeest Museum Meermanno / Museum van het Boek The Hague, Netherlands Etruscan Midsummer Feast is a performative feast project developed in collaboration with Huis van het Boek in The Hague. The project brings together food design, ceramics, scenography, historical research, movement, sound, and audience participation. Over a six-month trajectory, I will develop public events, workshops, and a final seven-act feast around the Summer Solstice. The project takes inspiration from Etruscan and Roman ritual traditions, historical recipes, book culture, and communal eating. I will create hand-painted scenographic panels, edible sculptures, ceramic plates, ritual vessels, utensils, and table-based objects. These elements will form a temporary environment where the audience encounters food not only as a meal, but as sculpture, image, performance, and social ritual. Through this project, I continue my research into food as an artistic medium and as a way to challenge formal dining codes. The feast becomes a space where historical knowledge, material craft, and collective experience meet.
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2026
The sensible cook Museum Meermanno / Museum van het Boek The hague, Netherlands De Verstandige Kock is a collaborative research and food-design project developed with Trang Hà and Huis van het Boek in The Hague. The project connects the museum’s historical culinary collection, including the 1667 cookbook De Verstandige Kock, with the living heritage of the Moroccan community in The Hague. Through historical research, storytelling, workshops, and recipe development, the project explores the relationship between the Netherlands and Morocco through food culture, migration, labour, and trade. A central focus is the shrimp industry: its export and import routes, the history of Moroccan labour in Dutch food production and agriculture, gendered labour such as shrimp peeling by women, and the politics of sustainable fishing. The project treats recipes not only as instructions for cooking, but as carriers of social, political, and historical memory. By bringing archival material together with personal stories and collective cooking, De Verstandige Kock creates new recipes and public moments where food becomes a way to discuss heritage, labour, migration, and shared histories.
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2025
SOTTOBOSCO The Hague, Netherlands For my current project, provisionally titled Sottobosco, I am developing a performative feast in which ceramics, food, scenography, and ritual come together. Within this larger project, the ceramic production forms a central body of work. The ceramic works are inspired by the undergrowth: moss, roots, fungi, insects, reptiles, dry leaves, bark, and fragments of soil. I look closely at the hidden life of the forest floor, where decay and growth exist at the same time. An important reference for this research is the work of Otto Marseus van Schrieck, whose paintings of the sottobosco show nature not as an ideal landscape, but as a dense, dark, living world of plants, animals, insects, death, and transformation. In my ceramic production, I translate this interest into reliefs, plates, vessels, and sculptural fragments. The surfaces are built through pressing, carving, layering, glazing, and firing, so that the clay becomes almost like bark, fossil, lichen, or skin. These works are not only objects, but parts of a larger landscape that can later interact with food, performance, and the audience.
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2025
Samhain Feest CLUB LAAK The Hague, Netherlands Samhain Feast was an eight-act performative dinner developed around Celtic mythology, folklore, and the ritual origins of contemporary Halloween. The project took Samhain as a moment of transition: the night between harvest and winter, life and death, the visible and invisible world. For the project, I created a large scenographic environment with 21 hand-painted panels, each measuring approximately 3 x 1.5 metres. These paintings formed an immersive setting for the feast, surrounding the audience with a changing ritual landscape. Food, scenography, performance, sound, and collective eating came together in a sequence of acts inspired by myth, seasonal transformation, ancestral presence, and the symbolic crossing between worlds. The dinner was conceived not as a conventional meal, but as a theatrical and communal ritual. Through edible sculptures, staged courses, and hand-painted surroundings, the audience entered a temporary world where folklore, material craft, and food became part of the same narrative experience.
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2025
Dyonisian Winter Feast The Grey Space in The Middle, Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands thegreyspace.net/program/mattia-papp-dionysian-winter-feast/ Dionysian Feast was a seven-act performative dinner hosted at The Grey Space in the Middle in The Hague. Centered on the figure of Dionysus, the project brought together food, performance, scenography, and mythological storytelling in an immersive ritual setting. For the project, I created seven hand-painted fabric panels, each measuring approximately 4 x 2 metres, which formed the scenographic structure of the evening. These textile paintings presented my own interpretation of the myth and transformed the space into a theatrical environment. Across the seven acts, different performances unfolded alongside the dinner, combining movement, image, atmosphere, and collective eating. The project explored Dionysus as a figure of ecstasy, transformation, excess, and social release.
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2022
"Santi e Licheni" The Hague, Netherlands mattiapapp.com/SANTI-E-LICHENI I have always been interested in the iconography of religious figures and the usage of imagery as a moral compass. By painting these figures with a twist in the established iconography, I touch upon the idea that traditional moral values are perceived as corrupt, modern societies substituting them for new non-religious values. The sanctity of the catholic saints is questioned by the materiality of the paintings themselves – fading away and falling apart, dripping and separating pigments through chromatographic handlings. Moral corruption is insinuated by visual image corruption. The idea of craftsmanship in the art historical context of painting is very important, as it is a value that is no longer as appreciated as it used to be, and is disappearing. At the same time, I am fascinated by the aesthetic of the digital era. I frequently implement techniques that simulate photoshop collages, bright RGB colors, and low-resolution texture renderings. Therefore, in a society that does celebrate individualism, such as the western one, which acknowledges itself as Christian valued, the incoherence with this general assumption, is gigantic. Anyhow holy and profane have always been hand in hand when it comes to art and Catholicism, and the beauty of the Catholic art lies in this contradictory dualism, drunks and rosary beads on the churchyard. Together.
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2022
FOOD DESIGN AS BLEND BETWEEN GASTRONOMY AND FINE ART Amsterdam, Den Haag, Lisbon, Florence, Netherlands mattiapapp.com/FOOD-DESIGN-AS-BLEND-BETWEEN-GASTRONOMY-AND-FINE-ART My research also revolves around food, which I use as a medium itself. I create a social gathering, triumphant allegories, and Vanitas in the format of a theatrical performance, at the end of which the guests are fed the edible artwork. With "Garden of Primavera” I merge my research of visual harmony as a painter with my practice as a food researcher, seeking the perfect balance between these disciplines. My food design projects are based on the principles of Neoplatonic philosophy. Art must represent the ideal of a perfect world, and the beauty of forms is an expression of harmony and spiritual perfection. I see food as a medium capable of gathering people together, giving out beauty in a sinesthetic way.
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2022
ATLANTIS The Hague, Netherlands mattiapapp.com/ATLANTIS Project abstract In addition to my exploration of digital painting, during the pandemic in 2020, I extrapolated myself from a claustrophobic life through impossible narratives. This led to the major project I will continue to work on in the next year, Atlantis. In Atlantis, I combine the process of manipulation of materials and their accelerated decay for painterly purposes with the appropriation of the classical myth of Atlantis. The presentation method aims to resemble an archeological or natural history museum; displaying artifacts with elements of textures that resemble corals and fossilized marine life. This presentation lends the narrative truth, making the existence of magical creatures such as sirens plausible, creating a magical reality. The project envisages an imaginative narrative universe that revolves around the myth of Atlantis. This fictional narrative describes the discovery of Atlantis beneath the coast of Antarctica. The disappearance of this civilization occurred around 2 million years BC, when humanity passed from Australopithecus to Homo Habilis, or rather when the first men learned to handle tools. The inhabitants were not human, but whether they were amphibians or not, and how extended their reign was, is not clear yet. The natural marine flora and geological aspects became part of their architecture, and chemistry played a structural role in the construction of their urbanistic landscape. Eroded surfaces from sea creatures and oxidized metals from the water for instance become an integral part of the visual language of the cityscape.
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2021
VIDEO TABERNACOLI AND THEATER SCENOGRAPHIES Den Haag, Florence mattiapapp.com/VIDEO-TABERNACOLI-AND-THEATER-SCENOGRAPHIES Theatricality is a binding element in all my projects. Growing up, I regularly visited theater productions. I remember being stunned by the trickery and surprising visuals of these productions. Many years later, theater is very present in my work. A telling example of this theatricality is my work "Triptych van RGB's work". It consists of a jungle on stage, that combines plants and vines with cables and a triptych of screens, showcasing my video works. These video works are part of a series inspired by the religious street altar typical of Italy, the "tabernacolo". Contemporary deities are substituted ironically to traditional ones, created through the green screen, this work includes elements from Botticelli and Giorgione. Tabernacoli are small stone structures containing religious icons, they are part of a diffuse sense of religiousness that is now lost in my country, and these structures are more of a reminiscence of a lost aspect of the Italian culture, and moreover they became just an architectural element, mostly unnoticed. I always found them very fascinating, as they would contain priceless artworks, and yes, of course, Italy is quite inflactionated with antiquity, it these shrines would be in the U.S they would probably have a bigger impact on the urban landscape.I found very fascinating of the tabernacoli, their uniqueness in the panorama of western culture.
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2019
MURI The Hague, Florence, Netherlands mattiapapp.com/MURI MURI Decay and research on unusual painting materials is another pillar of my body of work. For the series Muri (2018) I recreated details of walls of various churches of Italy on wooden panels. The churchyard is commonly used in Italy as a place of social gathering, people get together to interact, get drunk, party, and piss on the walls. This process accelerates the decay of the structure, it erodes the material of the walls, moss grows on it, molds are born. This is part of the iconic charm of the Italian urban landscape, and I tried to mimic these walls as if they were scenographic backdrops. I used cement, limestone, chalk, and pigments on the panel for the mural. With ammonia, I then eroded the surface to reenact one of the most common activities performed daily on them. I poured water on them for hours, simulating the effect of weeks of rain, worked them with a hammer, tearing them down and rebuilding them. I accelerated the process of centuries of erosion, decadence, and human life experience in the span of a few weeks for each panel. I grew moss on them and eventually covered them in resin to preserve these monuments to decay. The experiment with materials became a strong focus since the beginning of this project, finding a way in it to glorify the decay of my country of origin, which I find to be extremely charming in her contradictory aspects. The positive meets the extremely negative in her relationship with the holy and profane, with historical heritage and political reactionism. “Christian values” clash with harsh xenophobia. It is a reality of decadence; of moral decline and indulgence in pleasure. My walls in the Muri series paint a portrait of this reality, historical religious buildings falling to pieces because they are used as a public bar. The cracks in the walls are like scars on Italian society, showing the flaws of a centuries-old land. The walls are like living beings, preserving the memory of everything they witnessed in their long life.
International exchanges/Residencies
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2025cortex frontal Arraiolos, Portugal The program consists of three biweekly artistic residencies, each composed of a visual artist and a gastronomist. In these, the first week is dedicated to training, exchange of ideas, workshops, talks, study visits, showcookings, and tastings, followed by a second week focused on individual work with curatorial guidance. At the end of each residency, there will be a presentation event through an Open Kitchen. The project culminated with the edition of a printed publication and a collective exhibition in Porto www.cortexfrontal.org/comercomosolhos
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2023Tao Hua Tan, China the international artists' retreat and painting residence workshop will take place in Tao Hua Tan, Anhui Province, China, from October 12th through October 31st, 2023. As decided by the organizers, about 40 artists from China, and from different countries of the world, will be invited to participate. The participating artists will be selected by the curators: Gordan Novak owner of Novak Graphics Inc. printmaking studio and publisher from Admiral, Saskatchewan, Canada; Liu Jian, artist, art consultant and curator from Toronto, Canada and Beijing China; www.taohuatanart.com/
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2020Numeroventi Florence, Italy 3 months exploration of my Atlantis project numeroventi.it/daylight-opening/
Commissions
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2016Diligentia theater Den Haag panel
Sales/Works in collections
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--Italy/Germany/Belgium/France//Netherlands, Nederland Various paintings to different private buyers, between the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Germany and France . starting in 2012
Publications
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2025What happens when food becomes architectural metaphor? Frame Magazine Amsterdam, Netherlands Article on how dining experiences are becoming increasingly architectural – less about what's served and more about how food activates and fundamentally reshapes the spaces we inhabit.
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2023Spiritual practices: with artist Mattia Papp in search of beauty and decay in the Haagse Bos http://mistermotley.nl/Eindexamens_2011/2011/07/11/Eindexamententoonstelling_KABK//#more Linda Selena Boos Netherlands www.mistermotley.nl/spirituele-praktijken-met-kunstenaar-mattia-papp-op-zoek-naar-schoonheid-en-verval-in-het-haagse-bos/ Linda Selena Boos spends an afternoon with artist Mattia Papp in the Haagse Bos: the place where he finds inspiration and experiences spiritual connection. Papp talks about his fascination with moss, collective memories stored in ancient city walls and the different forms of life in nature.
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2020The T list, 5 things we reccomend this week the newyork time (T magazine) Laura Rysman www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/t-magazine/margo-price-album-tlist.html?fbclid=IwAR1wM3bTTdLu31PDIzL_mfUdyvB--lyvUgVkL21oOmXkDvjCYDjL9NvLiTo
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2017Den haag centraal
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2017vice
Awards and grants
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2026Kunstenaar Project mondriaan fonds The hague, Netherlands 6 months trajectory for a collaboration with Meermanno museum in The Hague, for the realization of the Mid Summer Etruscan Feast
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2025SOTTOBOSCO Mondriaan Fonds International Presentation London Funding for my solo exhibition in London at Galleria Objets
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2021Kunstenaar Start mondriaan fonds Amsterdam, Netherlands De bijdrage Kunstenaar Start wordt toegekend aan kunstenaars die ten minste 1 tot maximaal 4 jaar als professioneel kunstenaar werkzaam zijn.
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2017painting prize assigned from the jan roede association, given to one graduating student in the KABK winner of Jan Roede painting prize
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2017one of three finalists in the painting section nominated for the piket kunst prize
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2015winning design for the entrance panel for the diligentia theater, the competition was introduced during the second year of the KABK winner of DIligentia theater competition
Representation
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Secondary art-related activities
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2019 - --Teacher On-going