Martina Stella’s artistic practice combines asemic writing with digital reproduction and video projection techniques, in order to explore the potential of the re-creation of a writing, usually drawn by hand, with new technologies, which transform it into digital code. This research is developing in several directions, on the one hand by addressing the notion of asemic landscape, the origins and modes of spatialization of the text through the projection of graphemes in the exhibition space. No longer on paper, but on the wall, Stella’s illegible ideograms extend horizontally or vertically; oscillating between two and three dimensionality, they envelop the visitor with a noise. The Digital Asemic (2018) digital prints show a visual score, whose signs, directly inspired by objects and actions, are condensed into small symbols drawn by thin lines. In Chinese calligraphy, the gesture, beyond defining an object, reveals a state of mind. Impregnated with this art, Stella’s writing reveals a particular and complex relationship with the perception of reality.

Sara de Chiara and Pauline Mack, In the catalogue of the exhibition,
Ecrire en dessinant, quand la langue cherche son autre
Which took place at CAC de Genève from 20.01.2020 to 23.08.2020.
The catalogue has been published at Editions Skira, 2020.
Martina Stella
Visual Artist

Martina Stella, born in Trieste, Italy, in 1992, lives and works in Paris.

Graduated in Photography and contemporary art at Paris 8 University, she is currently working as an audiovisual artist and technician. She is specialized in video projection techniques: Video mapping as a symbolic form has been the subject of her master’s researches, in which esthetic theory comes with solid technical knowledge and practical artistic research.

Martina Stella’s work inhabits the exhibition space through installation, projections and drawing, which is the first step of the image conception and evolution in space. Martina practice occurs in a back-and-forth movement, where in-betweenness state and interdependence relationships play a fundamental role: her attention is drawn towards what takes places between the drawing and the support, between the image and the environment. She reflects on the images of the untold and the unspeakable, stating and claiming the impossibility of language through her practice of unreadable writing. In asemic writing, the abstract calligraphy Stella practices, signs are unreadable yet charged of meaning: between writing and drawing, the limits of the image relate to the limits of language. The written sign becomes the fundamental unit, the actual medium to question our relation to time and space.

Martina Stella
Visual Artist

Martina Stella, born in Trieste, Italy, in 1992, lives and works in Paris.

Graduated in Photography and contemporary art at Paris 8 University, she is currently working as an audiovisual artist and technician. She is specialized in video projection techniques: Video mapping as a symbolic form has been the subject of her master’s researches, in which esthetic theory comes with solid technical knowledge and practical artistic research.

Martina Stella’s work inhabits the exhibition space through installation, projections and drawing, which is the first step of the image conception and evolution in space. Martina practice occurs in a back-and-forth movement, where in-betweenness state and interdependence relationships play a fundamental role: her attention is drawn towards what takes places between the drawing and the support, between the image and the environment. She reflects on the images of the untold and the unspeakable, stating and claiming the impossibility of language through her practice of unreadable writing. In asemic writing, the abstract calligraphy Stella practices, signs are unreadable yet charged of meaning: between writing and drawing, the limits of the image relate to the limits of language. The written sign becomes the fundamental unit, the actual medium to question our relation to time and space.

Martina Stella’s artistic practice combines asemic writing with digital reproduction and video projection techniques, in order to explore the potential of the re-creation of a writing, usually drawn by hand, with new technologies, which transform it into digital code. This research is developing in several directions, on the one hand by addressing the notion of asemic landscape, the origins and modes of spatialization of the text through the projection of graphemes in the exhibition space. No longer on paper, but on the wall, Stella’s illegible ideograms extend horizontally or vertically; oscillating between two and three dimensionality, they envelop the visitor with a noise. The Digital Asemic (2018) digital prints show a visual score, whose signs, directly inspired by objects and actions, are condensed into small symbols drawn by thin lines. In Chinese calligraphy, the gesture, beyond defining an object, reveals a state of mind. Impregnated with this art, Stella’s writing reveals a particular and complex relationship with the perception of reality.

Sara de Chiara and Pauline Mack, In the catalogue of the exhibition,
Ecrire en dessinant, quand la langue cherche son autre
Which took place at CAC de Genève from 20.01.2020 to 23.08.2020.
The catalogue has been published at Editions Skira, 2020.