Cristiana de Marchi (born in Italy, lives and works in Beirut and Dubai) is an artist and a writer who explores (through performance, video, and installations of embroidered objects and tapestries) issues related to verbalization and translation, to the correspondence between physical and nominal dimensions. Some of her themes are the use of languages in propaganda, the transition between ‘territories’ and contexts and the redefinition of memory and identity. She was artist in residence at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia,USA. Her work has been shown in India, Italy, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Spain, UK, UAE and USA.
Cristiana de Marchi’s work is minimalist in its essence. During the past few years she has been intensively working on embroideries using a variety of easily accessible objects and materials, which we deal with on a daily basis including kitchen utensils, light home furnishings and aliments.
This long term and ongoing project originated from her interest in words and their translation and in the correspondence between physical and nominal dimensions, between actions and wording.
Her other recent projects focus on the controversial territory of language and messages of propaganda, in this case supported by a clear manipulative purpose; and on the theme of identity, treated by the artist from an ironic, acute and yet witty perspective.
Performances and videos constitute the other direction of de Marchi’s research, investigating the line between phrasing and acting, between the aura recognized in the former and the obviousness and self-evidence of the latter.
Whereas the use of words is regulated by the contradictory and conventional reference to a set system of cultural (in the wider sense) rules, the use of the body eludes these rules, placing the communication on a hyper-real level and involving a fluid combination of both verbal and non- verbal languages.