Viola Poli
Viola Poli is an artist who creates multisensory installations connecting diverse materials and spaces. Her work blends intuitive gestures with reflections on materials’ origins, properties, and environmental impact, often using biodegradable and recycled elements like plants, ash, shells, and ceramics. She experiments with edible installations, poetry, photography, video, and sound, producing site-specific, sometimes ephemeral works. Viola has exhibited in various Swiss venues and is currently affiliated with the Sourville ateliers in Lancy (2023-2026).
In conversation with Viola Poli during the exhibition Oltre la pietra at Castelgrande, Bellinzona.
What is the purpose in your work?
My work is very much focused on materials, so I am interested in all the materials that I use, their origin, their path, and their properties. I explore how I can work with these materials, and I also experiment in the search for new ones. For example, I present fabrics treated with beeswax and pigments, as well as bioplastics that I create. This approach considers the materials themselves, their origin, and also the life cycle of the materials, including their use, reuse, and the ecological aspects of how to use, reuse, and invent new materials for my work.
Tell us about the project you exhibited at Oltre la pietra
Sous(p)eau is a piece that creates a parallel between human skin, but also animal and plant skins, as a boundary between the inside and the outside. It reflects an interior world of sensations and mental images and an external world that surrounds us. The work draws a parallel with the Earth, viewing the Earth's crust as a boundary between the environment and the world as a living body. This parallel encompasses everything that passes through us, what we eat, drink, and wear, and also passes through the Earth. There is this connection between taking care of ourselves and taking care of the Earth. The works themselves already show traces and scars, much like human or terrestrial skin, carrying marks of leaves and the artistic process. I work intuitively, letting one thing lead to another, valuing the entire process. The works change over time and take on different lives depending on their location and exposure. For example, the piece created for a space in Geneva was integrated with the architecture, especially the large arched windows that represent thresholds between interior and exterior spaces. Here at the castle, the work was modulated differently, rebuilt to take on a new life, with materials including a new leather called suppo, or under-leather, layered like skin that mutates and changes. These works are exposed to the weather, which influences their transformation over time.
What’s the role of the artist today?
Regarding my role as an artist today, I remain deeply connected to materials and the awareness of their impact. This awareness influences my work, and in some way, I hope to influence others by avoiding plastics, reusing materials, and recycling. I often reuse metal and recycle parts of my work that I no longer exhibit or present them in a new way, extending the life of these materials. When I create films or artworks, I prefer to do so in a biodegradable and ecological manner. The ecological and environmental impact is very important to me. Additionally, as a woman artist, I am influenced by ecofeminism, which resonates with and informs my practice. My work often invites viewers to cross open and closed spaces, to look beyond the work itself, and to connect with the landscape and the environment. The arches and forms recall elements of the castle, allowing for multiple levels of observation, from micro details like leaf imprints found along the river in Geneva, to intermediate views of the whole, and the macro perspective of how we write ourselves into the landscape.