antonia contro

Artist Statement

My work explores the nature of knowledge. I am interested in the relationship between the ways we communicate what we know—language, data—and the intuitive, often subconscious, ways we convey what we hold to be true.

In an age of immediate, pervasive, and isolating digital information, I am intrigued by the knowledge we attain through our senses, and the potential for art to inspire empathy and connection.

I often begin with a quick note or drawing in a sketchbook or on a scrap of paper. Books and journals are my laboratories. The images and ideas within them provoke deeper investigations—collage, animation, light, sound—that evolve into immersive installations, multidisciplinary projects, and collaborations.

Through site-specific exhibitions I physically place the observer within the context and sensory experience of the piece: walking the length of a long table to view a series of collages; stepping into a tent in a field to discover blue sky and a solitary cloud; seeing and hearing sand move through an immense hourglass; opening a book and entering into an evocative soundscape.

My art explores how we yearn to name, interpret, and organize the worlds around, inside, and beyond us and plays with the nuanced relationship between fact and truth. I aim to convey a rhythm between the grand and the diminutive, the specific and the impressionistic, that which is measurable and that which is felt.