Asya Dell’Omodarme (b. 1997, Italy) lives and works between Livorno and Venice. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Since 2021, she has been a member of Atelier F, where she takes part in its activities and exhibitions, including the Antares Workshop. In 2023, she won first prize at Mestre Pittura; in 2024, she contributed to the creation of a mural for the MAHKU collective on the occasion of the Venice Biennale and was among the finalists for the Combat Prize. She has exhibited at Stazionearte, Milan, in 2025, and at the Fortezza Nuova, Livorno, in 2026.
Asya Dell’Omodarme’s practice moves along the fine line separating light from darkness and the familiar from the unknown. Nature lies at the heart of her investigation, yet this is not the reassuring or idealised nature of the landscape tradition. Her environments are primordial, dense with symbols and presences that evoke transformation and darkness. In her work, the natural and animal worlds merge and reveal themselves within an ambiguous space, where mystery and wonder coexist in a balance that is both ancient and contemporary.
Asya Dell’Omodarme’s pictorial installation takes the form of a ritual environment, a suspended landscape in which nature, superstition and memory intertwine. At the heart of the narrative is the image of the bat, which the artist draws from ancient apotropaic traditions, when its body was nailed to the doors of homes to protect them from witches, disease and misfortune. Through this figure, the artist reflects on the ancestral relationship between human beings and nature, revealing how myths, beliefs and rituals continue to inhabit our collective imagination today.
Alongside the screeching bats, a symbolic bestiary emerges, drawing upon the many iconographies of witchcraft and pagan folklore. The cat, traditionally associated with witches and knowledge of the unseen, and the black swan, an emblem of that which disrupts the established order, form a multitude of signs that evoke an archaic imaginary. Screaming children and the alien eyes of fairies emerge among the beasts, adding sounds and images that contribute to the chaos of this occult universe. They become traces of stories, fears and rituals that have accumulated over time.
Darkness thus becomes a fertile space in Asya Dell’Omodarme’s work, capable of bringing long-buried memories and ancestral knowledge to the surface. Her intention, however, is neither to reconstruct witchcraft as a historical phenomenon nor to illustrate its iconographic repertoire. Rather, she evokes its infinite manifestations as expressions of the human need to give form to the unknown. Her works restore dignity to that which has been marginalised, feared or misunderstood, inviting us to recognise within these elements the possibility of seeing – or rethinking – the symbols of our society from a different perspective.
Text by Milena Zanetti