Rebecca Ganima Michelini (b. 1997, Italy) completed her studies in Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna in 2023. In 2022, she participated in OpenTour at OTTO Gallery, winning the Critics’ Prize and exhibiting at Arte Fiera Bologna. In 2023, she was selected for the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa residency programme in Venice, which concluded in 2024 with an exhibition at Palazzetto Tito, Venice.
Rebecca Michelini’s practice focuses on observing natural elements within everyday settings: small objects that no longer play an active part in the ecosystem, having completed their life cycle and now waiting to be transformed into something else. These elements belong fully to neither life nor death, but inhabit a threshold suspended between one phase and the next. It is precisely within this liminal space that the artist’s work takes shape.
Collecting twigs, leaves and berries is the starting point for the creation of her sculptures. By joining and binding natural elements together, Rebecca Michelini does not invent forms from nothing, but reveals those already latent within the material itself. These forms reside in the human mind, rooted in the archetypes of mythology and extending into the manifestations of contemporary mass culture.
She thus assembles anthropomorphic creatures: beings that appear to belong to a world far removed from our own, yet are made from the very same matter we tread upon or gather without a second thought. The artist arrests these beings in time, giving them an entirely different materiality and transforming them into small, gleaming jewels.
Fragility is the defining feature of these creatures, which are born ephemeral and perishable. Bronze and copper do not erase this precariousness, but reposition it: although the structure changes material, it retains its delicacy and lightness. Whereas the creatures previously seemed destined to succumb to their fate, they now consolidate their energy, strengthened by their own existence.
The sculptures presented at ReA Fair resemble animals. We might recognise a giraffe, a horse or a dog in them, but we certainly do not see merely a collection of small branches. The animal and plant worlds merge, giving rise to an organic and indeterminate presence. The two bronze creatures, poised in a precarious balance, support themselves with a quiet determination capable of transforming fragility into a form of resistance. Behind them lies a constellation of shapes that may initially resemble stars but, upon closer inspection, might recall spiders. The forms appear familiar at first, yet their nature gradually reveals itself as alien, evoking a presence that is at once recognisable and unsettling.
The combination of these elements and their spontaneous, playful arrangement gives rise to presences that appear simultaneously familiar and alien. Within this tension, vulnerability and resistance coexist, without either being resolved or overwhelming the other.
Text by Milena Zanetti
