Federica Belli

After months and months of research, experiments, nights in the ocean and days in the darkroom, part of my (OUR) new body of work is coming to light at @artparisartfair 🥹 During a residency by the ocean at @melidesart (FOREVER THANK YOU @amomelides ) I found myself pushing further this obsessive research on identity & perception of the self. While until then I was focusing on collective human identity, I suddenly started wondering how the ocean feels regarding some fundamental phenomena it witnesses: does it feel its waves at all times, or are waves comparable to our bloodstream of which we are only conscious at times? does the ocean even have the concept of sunrise & sunset, or being so vast it just sees the sun at all times? I basically felt the urge to get into the sea and REALLY photograph it as a particle of its waters could perceive it: bathing photosensitive paper in the ocean at night, from the center of the night to the sunrise, to capture all the fluctuations, the sands, the medusae, the algae… Of course I had no idea if it was possible and how to do it, and here come other HUGE thank yous to @diamantinolabophoto.labo , who is an author of this project as much as I am, and to @ithaque_paris for leading me towards him. From then, months of experiments, nights in the freezing ocean, punk darkrooms on the beach & hotel showers to wash the negatives. Months of work & research leading to a whole new obsession on fluids, identity and bodily fluids - but this is another story. Thank you @ritabonino @santirealccs for accompanying me through this all. Grazie to the friends, mentors & wonderful professionals who gave me way more than their two cents during the process @claudiocomposti73 @marcolivierwahler @bigaignon_ @michelpoivert @sophiedemellof @asha_iman_too @kehrerverlag Grazie grazie @boris.bergmann for sharing this dream with me & bringing it to life through your moving words. And mostly, thank you to @bildhalle for truly seeing this work and trusting its honesty enough to make it part of their showcase at Art Paris 2025. See you at the stand E6! More, a lot more, to come 🌊 🎥 @_benoitdurand

Magnifique début de cette nouvelle démarche à @artparisartfair with @bildhalle and their team of artists. My heart is full of joy and gratitude for being welcomed amongst artists I have admired from afar for so long & for having my work defended with such care by the gallery. And this is just the (new) beginning 🌊 Text reads: THE DREAM OF THE BLUE STAR Photograms of the Ocean at Night Made without a camera, Federica Bell's photo-grams and sculptures are distilled to the essential components of the photographic medium: light, subject matter, and photo-sensitive paper or metal. Immersed in the ocean water, exposed to the moonlight for just some seconds at night, the photosensitive paper captures the light passing through the waves. Each piece is a photogram exposed for the same number of seconds to the moonlight, at regular intervals, from the middle of the night to the moment of the sunrise, thus capturing a self-portrait of the ocean's variability, capturing the sand, the algae and the medusae carried by the waves over the paper. "The body of work, consisting of multiple series of photograms, is a natural prosecution of my research on self-perception through the language of the photographic self-portrait. After years spent investigating the écart between my perception and the one of the humans around her, I became curious about the perception of non-human substances that constitute our eco-system. How could I try to imagine how it feels to be not someone else, but rather something else? The sheets of Fujiflex Color paper, physically immersed for some seconds in the most powerful - equally fascinating and terrifying - natural substances, and successively developed in the darkroom, brought me straight inside those substances I could not experience first-hand: the burning fire, the deep ocean at night, the underground. The result is a self-portrait of each substance which, in destroying the paper, also leaves its photographic mark." Federica Belli

As happy as I could be about the debut at @parisphotofair 🥰

Holding so much gratitude within this lil body. The show “Bodies of Light” opened last night at @bvlgari Roma, in their historic boutique at Via dei Condotti 10, bringing together wonderful works from the @collezionegiuseppeiannaccone in conversation with my works. I am honored to see my photographs in conversation with artists such as Kiki Smith, @tylersphotos & @cindyshermanlegacyproject amongst others. A heartfelt thank you goes to @daniele_fenaroli & the team at @fondazionegiuseppeiannaccone , to the Bulgari team and to my gallery @galleriavaleriabella for their ongoing support. The show is on view until October 4th.

ops, I did it again! my second time as a @tedx_official speaker & I couldn’t be more grateful to the wonderful team for the invitation. thank you for supporting this enthusiastic kid in her mischievous pursuits. video up soon!

The first part of the magical residency at @villagamberaia is coming to an end, and I couldn’t be more grateful to @emanuelamazzonis and the team at Gamberaia for welcoming me and @claudiagrad , creating the perfect environment for blossoming and advancing in our research. If life is rich thanks to the people who support us, these weeks had me feeling insanely blessed. I left @diamantinolabophoto.labo and came to Florence with hundreds of sheets of photosensitive paper. I ended up not only using them all in the garden, but also working on silicon molds, wax & glass. This kid is blossoming in many ways & only thanks to the people watering her roots. More to come! ☀️

Federica Belli is One of the two artists selected for the first artist residency at Villa Gamberaia Her work explores identity and self-perception through themes of presence and vulnerability, shaped by Oliviero Toscani’s visual clarity and inspired by the Italian countryside. Winner of Sky Arts Master of Photography 2018 and the BNL Acquisition Prize 2021, she has exhibited at leading international fairs including Paris Photo, Zsona Maco, Photo London and MIA Photo Fair. @fedebelligram @emanuelamazzonis #FedericaBelli #VillaGamberaia #ArtistResidency #ContemporaryPhotography

So… this happened! I’ve been selected as one of the Italian emerging artists Under 35 for the @gruppo_bcc_iccrea project « BCC Arte & Cultura – Giovani Emergenti ». The work “Even at Rock Bottom, the Light Doesn’t Go Out” is now on show at BCC Alpi Marittime & will be part of the collective catalogue. Big thank you, @cesarebiasiniselvaggi & @matteonotme , for thinking of my work and including it in this adventure. Thank you @gruppo_bcc_iccrea , Marta, Alessio, Domenico & the whole team in Carrù for making this come to life. Thank you @diamantinolabophoto.labo , @atelier_image_collee , @legnomania_srl , Alberto, Auraš, Massimo, Giorgio & Guido for your precious work.

Solo show “Strange Attractor” on view in Milan through April 18th at VALERIABELLA gallery. Curated by yours truly in this unique untouched jewel of a space from old Milan, with a text by my dear @dayneris_brito 🫧 VALERIABELLA is pleased to present Strange Attractor, Federica Belli’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition brings together both the recognisable subjects of the young artist’s repertoire and a previously unseen direction in her research: in the former, the body engages in a play that challenges the intangible yet insurmountable boundary of the skin; in the latter, photographic paper becomes substance and body, direct register of the trace of life. A series of recurring figures thus takes shape, in which the femininity of the body relinquishes the sensual to become mystical in its fusion with the island, the promontory, and the fleeting clouds, while the body’s most hidden grotesque— blood, exhalations, tears—is sublimated into the imprint captured by photosensitive paper. The works attest to the depth of a photographic practice in constant evolution, beyond any fixed definition of the medium. In the closets, an archive of the lifelong collections & obsessions of the young artist: mathematics, quantum physics, ancient greek & contemporary philosophy & esotericism.

My solo show in Milan is now open at VALERIABELLA gallery, on view through April 18th. Sunday is for a sneak peek into one of its multiple layers: while the works are indeed hanging on the walls (no spoilers here!! come see the show, kids), I squatted the archival closets in the gallery with some of my building bricks- the books, the obsessions, the notes, the postcards, the bones & shells collected while working over the years. All the materials I live within in my studio in Paris, shipped to Milan for once for an immersion in my bubble made of physics, philosophy, art history & esotericism. If you make it to the gallery, feel free to step into my brain- it’s a fun castle. 🫧 ATTACHMENT NOT PICTURED HERE: all my sincere gratitude to the wonderful humans who introduced me to the authors, poets, thinkers & magicians behind these wonderful books. Oliviero, Diego, Stephan, Marc Olivier, Anfisa, Anna Lisa, Massimo, Claudio, Manuel, Davide, Arthur, Rita, Elisabeth, Santi & Aleph- you all contributed to the making of this human. 🤍

Becoming One
⛓️ Full dialogue with Federica Belli @fedebelligram is now on FVTVRIST Working without a camera, she lets light, organic matter, and her own body inscribe themselves directly onto photosensitive surfaces ~ grief entangled with joy, attraction with repulsion, self-portraits marked by an absence of self. Federica’s solo STRANGE ATTRACTOR opens tomorrow, March 26, at Galleria Valeria Bella @galleriavaleriabella Milan

@miaphotofair has been quite a blast! Italian debut for my research on the material traces of fluids (and of life) on photosensitive paper, but also homecoming to the place where it all started with @bnlbnpparibas_ 💙 Grateful to @icollectphotography for continuously bringing Italian photography onto the global stage, with such precision and grace. We see your hard work. Grateful to @galleriavaleriabella for trusting my work once again & seeing the invested kid I am. To @fujifilmitalia for supporting me in my wildest ideas and helping me bring them to life. To @alessandra_zenga and @bnlbnpparibas_ for making me feel like a precious human being every time- so, so thankful. To you, @amomelides for having given me access to the the safest space for thinking and playing-this wouldn’t exist without you- and to you, @emanuelamazzonis for inviting me into another enriching experimental space soon. Of course, always always thank you @diamantinolabophoto.labo & @atelier_image_collee for being THE COOLEST visionary team. And to the collectors who recognized something in this abyss and chose to sustain its future—thank you. Plus, last but not least, @arthur.dayras @claudiocomposti73 @lulli_dm @rischa_paterlini @francisnotgallagher @benedettadonato @dariushimes @collezionettoremolinario @echo119_galerie @mariagruzdeva — thank you for being there & making all this work feel like play. You’re cool people.