Valentina Sciarra

Born in Rome/Italy in 1983.

After completing an LL.M in law and a range of specialist photography courses, Valentina Sciarra received a diploma with honors from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma (Rome/Italy) in 2013, with a thesis on Les espaces en friches (Wastelands in the Urban Space), written during a study program at Villa Arson, Ecole Nationale supérieure d’art in Nice/France. She currently lives and works in Sofia/Bulgaria, where she completed an MA in sculpture at the National Academy of Arts in 2018.

Her works encompass in-situ interventions at the intersection of photography and installation, sculpture and sound. Some of these constitute permanent works in public spaces or on nature sites, including Acqua Non Potabile, a site-specific plastic fountain commissioned by the European Capital of Culture Plovdiv/Bulgaria (2019), The path of the oscillating stones, a rural art work at Strupanitsa’s rockfall in Lukovit/Bulgaria (2018), Vita in the Murgia National Park, Italy (2016) and Entre terre et ciel, a permanent installation at the entrance of the Archet Hospital in Nice (2013).

She has performed specific research on stone sculpture since 2016, where the act of creation is not directed at shaping – molding – or giving form to the stone, but the focus is placed instead on growing or transfiguring the potential of the stone itself. The sculptures are the simple, direct results of the stones’ original shape or geological formation. Every stone is chosen for its ability to suggest and for its ability to become.

Valentina received the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award in 2019 and 2018, and is the recipient of a fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart/Germany in 2020, in the context of its East European exchange program.