Claudia Borgna

Born in Germany raised in Italy, my cultural formation developed at the University of Genoa, Italy, at the London Metropolitan University, UK, and at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles. But my academic experience could not be complete without the knowledge gathered from nature and from an itinerant lifestyle that took me from rural to urban environments in the pursuit of art and love.
A recipient of the Joan Mitchell Grant, the Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner Grant, the Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award and the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship Award. Voted the Public Speaks Winner for the Broomhill National Sculpture Prize also short-listed for the BBC2 documentary School of Saatchi commended for the British Women Artist’s Prize, more recently the recipient of the Maryland Federation of Art Juror’s Choice, digital Art finalist for the Women United Art Movement Art Prize and digital finalist for the Amedeo Modigliani Prize.
Since graduating from Suzanne Lacy’s Public Practice MFA program, my work has taken a radical eco-feminist turn. Whilst my art practice might well be my very own emancipatory process weaved into the environmental crisis, I voice myself through performances, videos and interactive poetry. I want to experiment with personal transformation: can it be a form of social engagement? Hence flipping things around a bit, although still in the vein of the personal is political, but also sacred. Nonetheless, environment and nature remain inherent, cardinal themes without which my art could not even exist. Care — anything we do is to benefit selves, to conquer freedom and ultimately love. But reality is conditioned by all the social, cultural, moral, ethic-aesthetic judgments. Art, instead, is my safe space where I can be vulnerable, authentic and grow out of my wound’s confinement to become whole, that’s what drives my practice, to create a space for love.