PAOLA CASSOLA
Multimedia artist Paola Cassola began her career as a journalist and photojournalist working for Vogue and other international magazines. Her numerous assignments have taken her on long journeys, covering a variety of universal topics such as beauty, gender identity, politics, sustainability, poverty, wealth, health and culture, to name a few.
Her research continued until a trauma left her with extremely limited mobility in 2004. This pivotal moment led Cassola to explore new methods of expression, creating numerous autobiographical works and shifting the body, energy and movement to the center of her research.

Cassola’s practice continues to develop different forms of movement and technique that allow her to push the boundaries of the body. Cassola moves easily between painting, sculpture, photography, performance and video art, often crossing all these practices within the same work.
The recent Silhouettes combine her Energy Paintings with a performative experience aimed at leading the subject in question towards a meditative and dreamlike state, a moment in which their trace is impressed on canvas or paper by the artist. The result is an unconventional, but certainly more intimate portrait. The rope, one of Cassola's favorite expressive tools, synthesizes the concepts of limit and liberation. In addition to being an expressive tool in the Energy Paintings, the rope is used in mirrors, cast in bronze, in which, in addition to the symbolic meanings, the body is once again the protagonist.

The series of bronze works MIRRORS, made with lost wax casting, are all unique pieces entirely handmade with the attention to detail of a jewel. They are composed of a rope sculpted in the shape of a real rope that is intertwined with the branches and leaves of ivy - which by their nature cling tenaciously to everything around them - that the artist collects in the woods. The whole symbolizes life and the bonds that are formed in it, a promise of fidelity and loyalty. Finally, the body, at the center of Cassola's work, is present not only in the manual labor necessary to create this series of mirrors, but also in the moment in which, looking at ourselves in the mirror, we see our own image reflected.

Cassola was born in Milan, has lived and worked in London, Madrid, Geneva, Santiago de Chile and Rio de Janeiro. The artist currently lives and works between Miami, USA, and Pietrasanta, Italy. Arte in Salotto has dedicated a solo exhibition to Cassola in the fall of 2023.