Angela is an Italian performance artist, educator, and scholar living and operating in Naarm on the unceded land of the Kulin nations (Melbourne, AUS). She lectures in European Languages (Italian Studies) at Monash University (AUS), where she integrates the study of language, literature, and culture with the study of art history, the creative arts, and performance studies. Angela is the Next Generation Network (NGN) Convenor at the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC).
With a focus on socially-engaged art and education innovation, Angela works at the nexus between art, performance and embodiment studies, Italian and migration studies. Through a practice-as-research and interdisciplinary approach, she investigates the body-place relationship, identity and sense of belonging as permeable processes.
Performance art is Angela’s way to explore the world. Starting from her own experience or as personal responses to broader issues, Angela’s site-specific, durational, and participatory performances work as questions – What if…? Vulnerability, slowness, and the unforeseen are a value in her practice, where her body becomes a vehicle for messages and experiences, offered to the audience. By performing one action within minimal settings, extending time, Angela makes room for the participants who then become agentic elements of the shared performance process. The performative-participatory element characterises every medium in Angela's production.
Angela holds a Doctorate of Philosophy (Theatre and Performance - Monash University AUS), a Master of Visual and Performing Arts, and an Academy Diploma in Painting and Art History (Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin IT). She has been working as an educator for over 15 years in Italian and Australian Institutions, including at the Italian Institute of Culture in Melbourne and at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. Angela has extensive experience teaching in primary and secondary-education institutions as well, to students of diverse social and cultural backgrounds and abilities, including special-need students. Empathy and the human touch are core aspects of her teaching approach, informed by her knowledge of embodied practices and performative strategies. She also leads performative workshops informed by diverse disciplines, practices, methods, and masters with whom Angela has worked; these include © Body-Weather, Butoh, © The Abramović Method, Mole Wetherell (Reckless Sleepers), and John Britton (Self with Others).
Angela has presented her work internationally, including at the Biennale of Australian Art, Melbourne University, and CO.AS.IT Museo Italiano (AUS), Daegu Art Factory (SK), Our Dance Democracy Conference (UK), the University of Bielsko-Biała (PL), Performance Studies International Conference, the 12th Istanbul Biennial (TK), the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Human Rights – UNESCO, and Artissima (IT). In 2022, she has performed live at the 11th ACIS Conference (Australasian Centre for Italian Studies), the first artist ever to do so. She has co-curated an exhibition of iconic Australian performance artist Stelarc at the University of Biesko-Biala, PL (2021), where she was a key-note speaker at the 3rd International Conference "Theatricality and Antitheatricality", in collaboration with the University of Buenos Aires, RA (2022).
Over the years, Angela has worked extensively as an artist, researcher, and curator in interdisciplinary, community-engaged art projects both in Europe and Australia, in partnerships with institutions such as the Polytechnic of Turin (IT), UniCredit Bank (IT/DE), the Italian Ministry of Justice, and the City of Melbourne, among others. Angela sits on the Brimbank Arts Advisory Committee for Public Art & Community Engagement (Sunshine, VIC), and is a member of TaPRA - Theatre and Performance Research Association (UK) and AIAPI | Associazione Internazionale Arti Plastiche Italia | IAA/AIAP UNESCO Official Partner. She has recently joined the Professional Migrant Women Network and the ECCV-Ethnic Communities' Council of Victoria.
Angela's interest in making socially-engaged and accessible art within communities reflects in her research: she has published internationally on performance and public art, artivism, documentation and audience reception, and education.
(Complete CV here).