About

Lisa Mara Batacchi is an Italian/American multi-disciplinary artist born in Florence (IT) where she is based. She studied Fashion Design at Polimoda and then worked as a designer, more significantly for Vivienne Westwood in London. She completed her training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

Her poetics bring to light emotional bonds between individuals and society, documenting both a personal and a collective identity in relation to local communities as well as to transnational issues. Her works capture the most subtle variations deriving from dreams, symbologies, numerology and philosophical references. From these conceptual bases she creates devices that can lead, like talismans, to new forms of interactions and thoughts, in particular by exploring the delicate boundaries between earth-humankind-cosmos.

Since 2013, she has focused more deeply on the recovery of ancestral textile techniques, related to rituals and to traditions that are slowly but dramatically disappearing in the globalized cul- ture of the 21st century, both between oriental and western culture. Pursuing this direction, she established relations of cooperation at first with knitwear artisans in her hometown, Florence (IT) for the Soulmate (Within Time) project; in 2015 with ethnic minorities as the Banjara tribe in Bombay (IND) thanks to the Italian MIBAC Movin Up Prize Award and in 2016 with the Miao tribe in Guizhou Province (CH) for The Time of Discretion project.

As a result, her works come together as environmental and site specific installations, somehow magically installed out far from civilization in a desert landscape, as with her The Time of Discretion. Curtain (2016) that took place on the south east border of the Gobi Desert for the 4th LAM – Land Art Mongolia Biennale curated by Valentina Gioia Levy.

During the pandemia she learnt more deeply the art of tapestry in her hometown together with expert restorers and textile artisans. This generated her project Sand Storms in Medio Mundi produced by the Goethe Institut of Tbilisi (GE) and Baku (AZ) for Silk, a group exhibition curated by Alfons Hug, presented during the 59th Venice Biennale at GAD-Giudecca Art District.

This ongoing project has been later displayed in a solo show curated by Lottozero at Museo Mercantile for BAW – Bolzano Art Weeks as well as in the 10th International Biennale of Con- temporary Textile Art The Soft Revolution curated by Barbara Pavan at the Textile Museum in Busto Arsizio. A second step of the project Shamal. Sand Stone Stars, a site-specific installation promoted by Polimoda and curated by Federica Forti, was conceived for the Dubai Design Week 2022-Design With Impact directed by Kate Barry.

Her jacquard manual tapestries from the series Crossing Destinies have been included in Designeast, a platform created by director Rue Kothari, that launched with a group exhibition at Alserkal Avenue during the Dubai Art Week 2023, concentrating on textile narratives in the Global South.

She recently attended in Istanbul the 10th Europe Asia Mediations Biennale Polska – I Am Another You You Are Another Me directed by Tomasz Wendland. Her art works have been dis- played in other solo and collective exhibitions, among others: 2nd Something Else-Off Biennale in Cairo directed by Simon Njami, Manifesta 12 collateral event in Palermo curated by Arts & Globalization, MAD-Murate Art District in Florence (solo show) curated by Veronica Caciolli, Clark house Initiative in Bombay (solo show) curated by Sumesh Sharma, TAC-Textile Arts Center in New York (solo show), Villa Pacchiani curated by Ilaria Mariotti & Angelika Stepken.

She has held lectures, workshops, educational projects with The Italian Cultural Institute of Abu Dhabi and Alserkal Avenue (UAE), Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (IT), Arts Can Do-ACAF Foundation in Shanghai (CN), Siena Art Institute (IT), Lottozero in Prato (IT), Polimoda (IT).

Her long term project The Time of Discretion, included in Global Identities. Postcolonial and Cross-Cultural Narratives published by Mousse Publishing in 2019, was later released also as a monographic book by Silvana editoriale in 2020 and as a short film in 2021 awarded and screened in various international film festivals.

Her latest Shamal. Sand Stone Stars (2022) was reviewed as a must see installation at the Dubai Design Week on VogueArabia, ArabNews, Mille World and Elle Decor.