PASSEPARTOUT / Yogurt Magazine Prize 2022
Winner Interview

1

Why do you choose photography as the medium?

I chose photography because I felt I could fulfill my
curiosity through connecting and sharing with others.
Discovering the world and different cultures has always
been a calling for me.
I was immediately drawn to darkrooms and began seeking
the stories I would have wanted to live because
photography has always been the catalyst for me to be
able to live the thousand lives I longed for.

2

What is your background? and how does it affect your work?

As a young girl I went to art school, but the academic
rules of drawing, painting and sculpture over time began
to restrict me. At the time I was very interested in
feeding myself with poetry and literature and figuring
out how to shape my imagination.
When I graduated from high school at 18, I abandoned
applied techniques and continued on my path toward
photography, moving to Rome. Despite the technique, which
I honestly studied little, I would spend my days studying
the images of great photographers.
Today, however, drawing and painting are back in my life
and I am grateful for that.
This year I started an important project, which consists
of “painting performances” inside the homes of collectors
and individuals. The process began as a stream of
consciousness in the form of drawings which takes shape
from the quality of exchanges that the viewer and I
create at that moment in the room. They experiences the
act of creation and I create in the intimacy of the
situation.

3

Who are your biggest artist influences? and why?

First of all, it is the life of an artist that inspires
me. The intention behind the art, and I am referring to
the journey that a person embarks within themselves and
then channels through the act of being an artist, the one
who creates art.
Diana Arbus has been my greatest inspiration for as long
as i can remember.
As both a woman and an artist, she had the courage to
face her fears by following her darkest longings.
This is the bravest path in my opinion, as breaking down
the fence of one’s comfort zone leads to expansion and
freedom. And it is not for everyone.
Anders Petersen also showed me and encouraged me to
cultivate this path as the only possible path to love, so
as not to fall a slave to reality.
I allude to this specifically because I believe that only
by following oneself, in the search for one’s
authenticity and trusting one’s instincts, can one arrive
at the creation of something unique and universal. This
ordeal becomes apt then to simplify the expression of
one’s truth.

4

What motivates you to create?

Although human subjects are now rarely present in my
works, the encounter with the other remains crucial for
me because I personally experience art as an
investigation of my vulnerability.
Referring to my works, behind a map of the “Universe” is
my whole universe in the instant it was created.
Everything I emotionally experienced within those hours,
I committed to print.
“Universe” also alludes to the intimate language which
resides in each of us, and is often cryptic.
“Aves Mei” on the other hand spans the moods I
experienced in the homes I resided in.
The theme of “Home” was the beginning of my artistic
practice, perhaps because of the push to discover the
world, I needed to study a way to feel safe.
I graduated in 2008 with my graduation project at the
European Institute of Design featuring an investigation
on the subject of amusement park families of Italy.
Through the experience of traveling and learning about
another culture, I became considerably aware that the
only and true Home possible, was within myself.
In short, what deeply motivates me is to humbly try to
bring to the material plane this emotional and dreamlike
world that animates my life, and to do so I seize the
tools that life makes available to me.

5

How do you develop your artistic skills?

The constantly feeling myself as an learner, open to all
possibilities and with a curiosity without judgment I
wish to learn every day.
It is important for me to follow a no-holds-barred
experimentation, which, however, always starts with in-
depth studies.
Before all this, however, there is the dirty work:
identifying my longings and deconstructing my fears.

Giorgia Valli 
LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER 16, 2022