Untitled small #3, 2020 is part of a large body of work that reflects on the concepts of loss and transformation through a process that involves the destruction, separation, and recovery of photographic matter.
The process I used to create Untitled begins with the destruction of my early Polaroid works by cutting them into different shapes and narrow strips. The resulting images are subtle threads on blank paper, made of photographic emulsion removed from its original photo support. Recycling a material that is used for instant–print processes to create drawings on watercolor paper is an operation that interrogates humans’ adaptability in relation to transforming trauma and addresses the impossibility of imposing limits on expression.
Photography is pivotal to this process—from its traditional practice to its conceptual aspects and its various means of experimentation that goes far beyond alternative processes. Untitled meet on the border between photography and drawing, evading precise definitions and categorical barriers.
Through its minimal and slippery language, Untitled questions the concepts of divisions and absences as well as transitions and limits.
Beatrice Pediconi is an Italian-born visual artist based in New York. She explores themes related to trauma and recovery through a process that operates on the thin line of demarcation between techniques. Her chance-based practice involves painting and drawing through water to investigate the fragile and transitory nature of existence as represented by the flow of ephemeral images. She redefines several mediums to capture these temporary actions, including photography, video and, most recently, the emulsion lift technique on paper and canvas.
Pediconi received a Bachelor of Architecture at La Sapienza, Rome in 1999. In 2008, she was invited to participate in the VII Biennial of Experimental Art, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Pediconi was an Artist in Residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, California) (2019); Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, New York) (2018); and the Lucid Art Residency Program (Inverness, California) (2010). She was also a recipient of the 2015 Videoinsight® prize for Italian artists.
Her work has been shown internationally in exhibitions including, most recently, Cinema Ephemera, Central Brooklyn Public Library, NY (2020), NUCLEUS/Imagining Science, Noorderlicht International Photography Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands (2017); The Other View: Italian Women 1965-2015, La Triennale di Milano, Italy (2016-17); Sequences VII, Real Time Art Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland (2015); Ensembles, La Photographie, Quand La Maison Européenne de la Photographie Collectionne, Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2015); The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, New York (2013); The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, Oregon (2012).
Pediconi’s work has been acquired by numerous public and private institutions, such as La Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Macro Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; and Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy, among others. Her work has been published and reviewed in international magazines, including Il Giornale dell’Arte; Artforum; Harper’s Magazine; Art in America; and Photograph Magazine.
Her monographs include RED (De Luca Editori D’Arte, Rome, 2011); No Trace (Contrasto, Rome, 2011); 9’/ Unlimited, Collezione Maramotti (2014); and Beatrice Pediconi: Something Alien (Danilo Montanari Editore, 2016).