« Léna Piani, island artist and globe trotter, invites us on an exploration between darkness and light, revealing a fragment of what constitutes her and continues her work. Between unspeakable intimacy and perceptual games, Léna’s work is an open door to a journey that belongs to each individual’s sensibility. A contemporary artist who doesn’t limit herself to any medium, she experiments, weaves and constructs a territory of her own from her sensitive material. »
Orso, curator of l’Etrange Atelier Residency, Ajaccio, France.
About
Léna Piani’s works are attempts to escape.
Her multidisciplinary practice includes installations, photography, video and painting.
Her creative work is driven by the research for the capture of the ephemeral, the fleetingness of the momentum which in the lightness of its flight offers a metaphorical resistance to the burden of memory and family, social or political constraints. Her pieces tend to evoke the effervescence of an action in the progress, the rapture of a space to be conquered.
Some of her photographic and video work explores the perceptive phenomena associated with light in movement, through a process of experimental research based on an abstract deconstruction of light as a raw material, which she questions in terms of its space, volume and scale. Taken at high speed, these shots are the result of a highly dynamic physical process that engages her whole body in a performance punctuated by the random cadence of her rapid movements during the shoot.
It’s an interplay between reality deconstructed and reconstructed through hand-made visual effects that allow us to see the unsuspected magic or strangeness that surrounds us. It’s a diversion.
In her figurative approach to drawing and her narrative approach to video, she tends towards surrealist and dreamlike imagery, and through installations composed of miniature figurines, she links the human body to landscapes, playing on scales of proportion to create a sense of unreality, where humor sometimes blends with melancholy in a symbolic representation of the strength and fragility of the human being.
She also tackles the themes of consumer dependency, violence and the perception of territory through installations made up of assemblages of everyday objects.
They also tell a story of liberation.
Biography
Dakar (Sénégal) native French visual artist based in Ajaccio, France, Léna Piani spent her childhood between West and East Africa.
After this enchanted period, which opened her up to the differences of humanity, curiosity and to the colors of the South that filled her childhood drawings, she has over the years, faced the loss of her family, her father’s cancer, her brother’s fatal car accident and the degeneration of her mother, who suffered from Huntington’s disease.
She herself will have to face the late form of this disease in a few years’ time.
For her, there is urgency. Creating is a matter of survival.
She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows in Europe, notably at the Casa natale di Giotto museum, Florence, the PH21 gallery, Budapest, the Valid World Hall gallery, Barcelona, the LoosenArt gallery, Millepiani space in Roma or at the Marc Petit museum, Ajaccio, France.
And in various venues in the United States such as the Shockboxx Project gallery, CA, the Praxis Gallery, MN, or the Site Brooklyn gallery, NY.
Her video artworks have been screened as part of experimental film programs curated by the Millennium Film Workshop, New York, by Khloaris Production, NY, by Hijack! NY, the Corsica Docs 2021 festival in France, and the Venice Experimental Video and Performance Festival in Italy. She also collaborates with international music bands, using her video textures in their clips or projecting them on stage.
She is the laureate of the first place in the photography category and of a Special Mention from the Jury in the Installation-Sculpture category at the Mediterranean Contemporary Art Prize 2019 organized by the Porta Coeli Foundation, Italy.
Graduated from the University of Paris Diderot with a master’s degree in Arts and Letters directed by the philosopher and art critic Roger Dadoun, she is also a professor of Modern Literature.