Palimpsest, 2025/ongoing


I am currently working on this project within three interconnected works: in Marseille – with the
works Presqu'île and Zero Mètre – and in Stromboli – with Cartografia performativa del Mediterraneo (Performative Cartography of the Mediterranean). I consider travel as seen in the connection between body, vision and movement in space. My work conveys walking as a practice of aesthetic, mental and visual research (cf. Careri, Ingold, Twemlow, Cardoso...). Thoughts create other thoughts; stories build worlds and worlds build new stories (Haraway). We write and rewrite them continuously in the landscape that hosts them like a palimpsest. This term originally referred to an ancient manuscript, on papyrus or parchment, in which the original text was erased by washing and scraping and replaced by another, usually arranged in the spaces between the lines of the first or transversally to it. We can see islands and liminal places between land and water as physical and mental palimpsests in which our paths, feelings and traces are engraved, partially erased, tangled and intertwined. Looking, walking, thinking and acting in the landscape allows us to create a system of continuous self-generation. I am therefore interested in working on the individual and collective memory of places. My work is divided into two phases: through interviews, I collect information and stories about the place from some of its inhabitants through interviews.
Using this material, I begin to document and explore the places. Then I record my journeys digitally using Strava or Google. From the files generated, I create, with the help of the FabLab at the Polytechnic University of Bari, three-dimensional elements that are printed in clay. These objects are the three-dimensional translation of a path created by thoughts, movements and space, rewriting the landscape.

#journey #stratification #intertwining #translation #space #body #transformation
Presqu'île, 2024/ongoing


This is a project I am working on with Jean Arnaud, artist and professor emeritus at the University of Aix-Marseille. We are working together in thi project and we founded a collective, TOMBOLO: its name is taken from the strip of sand that, depending on the tide, connects or separates small peninsulas from the mainland. In particular, we focused on the one at Cap Taillat, near St. Tropez. The work I am showing is based on the concept of “intravision”, borrowed from the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch. 'Intravoyance' becomes a movement that makes the gaze vulnerable, sometimes uncertain, but open to new possibilities; it emerges from contact with events and places: it takes power away from vision and gives it to perception, to the body and to the agency of the elements of the landscape.
Zéro Mètre, 2022

My project is based on the identification of reference points for measuring sea levels (tide gauges) on certain shores of the Mediterranean - in Venice, Stromboli and Strombolicchio, for example - chosen as sites in perpetual danger that are, moreover, on the verge of disappearing. In these places, I video record the waves and movements of the sea, marking ideal measurements of Mediterranean aquatic space to ultimately define a kind of perceptive 'counter-space' that shapes itself in reference to a sea “level zero”. In fact, set up in 1883, the Marseille tide gauge is considered to be the measure of 'hydrographic zero': this scale serves as a reference not only for the Mediterranean basin, but also for the oceans, and it is used to measure the height of mountains. I see the zero-meter limit as the starting point for a perception, a discourse, an experience, and an embodied knowledge. My work on the sea surface focuses both on the limit and the connection between land and sea: I envisage to establish an environment for creating an exchange between places, thoughts and energies that here emerge, through a specific perception mediated by the visual mediums of video and photography. 

Before being a space, a territory is determined by connections: my work aims to create a 'mediated sea ecosystem' to open up possibilities for creation and transformation. These are materialised in 'speculative gestures', to actively modify the present that they entail (Isabelle Stengers). I therefore asked myself how the Mediterranean surface, as a geographical and allegorical territory, can become a space for 'communication', 'translation' in the Butler / Neimanis / Benjamin sense (linked to performativity for the perception of identity, as well as to a creative and political act) and ultimately for the 'construction' of a shared environment. In my work, the sea surface of the Mediterranean, as a melting pot of interactions, becomes both a material and metaphorical territory for representing what is sometimes invisible (entanglements, interdependent relationships, the complexity of an environment). The photographic medium is used not just for its documentary dimension, but for its 'extensibility', as an epistemological tool for embodied knowledge. This vision which is connected to the touch (Merleau-Ponty) thus becomes a tool for interaction, perception and creation between a limit and an off -limit, thus determining sensitive zones.

#surface #sea #speculativegestures #limit #scale #body #translation #vulnerability
Cartografia Performativa del Mediterraneo, 2020


This work aims to investigate the geography of the Mediterranean space through the representation of the movements and gestures it contains (crossing, meeting, clashing). As the performer weaves the thread, the space changes, becoming a labyrinth. The images acquire a performative and choreographic characteristic that creates a space perceived as a weave/grid, a place of frontier and transit at the same time. The plastic gesture of weaving underpins my approach of research and creation as a path.

The plastic gesture of weaving underpins my approach of research and creation as a pathway: it becomes a ‘’design‘’ in its double sense, a trace and a purpose that governs my making. 
I thus establish a relationship between image-body-space-territory (real and visual) and with certain objects that become ‘choreographic’, inducing particular movements. The Mediterranean thus emerges as a relational and complex space.

Project promoted by Arts and Science Research Center based in Rome

Performer: Simona Miraglia
Documentation credits: Numero Cromatico
Le Casse-tête, 2017-2018


 Starting from an image downloaded from the Internet and printed on paper, I explore new representations of the Mediterranean sea imaginary. I consider this sea as a place/territory of exploration and transformation. My actions are emblematic and refer to the duplicity of this space, a particular frontier marked by separation and connection. The thread connects different fragments while keeping them at a distance, separated but united.  In a complex universe such as the Mediterranean, identities and territories are in constant transformation. My images perhaps represent an unsolvable puzzle: they become a metaphor for the process of research, a never-ending attempt to grasp new perceptions of the world. My intention here is to reflect also on the meaning of contemporary images and their power of manipulating reality.
Universi complementari, Cartografia portatile, 2024
Much of my material is not yet present, hopefully I'll be able to show it very soon. Here is a link to my portfolio where you can find a selection of my works and their conception.

For more information on my educational programs, on my ongoing and past projects please contact me at: novella.oliana@gmail.com
© novella oliana 2026