Silvia Gentili is a multidisciplinary artist, workshop facilitator, and independent curator based in Rome.
Gentili’s polyvocal practice spans video, performance, photography, sound, and writing, focusing on intimate stories, which transcend individuality to resonate with a collective identity.
Her research focuses on the notion of trauma as it unveils in the human and more-than-human bodies. Creating a corporeal vocabulary through her gestures, she delves into modalities of self-representation connected to physical and mental pain and illness. She gives voice to embedded memories, trying to attune herself to the body’s unique way of communicating, which we often fail to listen to. She embraces dance theories and non-verbal exercises to conceive works aiming at releasing the body from somatic and social constraints.
She entangles her body with the environment, exploring how we coexist with inherited trauma while addressing social shocks, such as climate crisis and solastalgia. Just as the earth integrates or expels elements to regain balance, so does the human body in response to trauma and distress.
Exhibitions include Premio Combat Prize 22 (2022), Museo G. Fattori, Livorno; In Escalation (2021), a&o Kunsthalle, Leipzig; Political Bodies (2019), Galleria Cavour, Padova; Traces (2017), Kentish Town Health Centre, London; You cannot know it from the picture (2017), Sim Gallery, Reykjavík.
EDUCATION
2015, MA Photography, London College of Communication
2006, Diploma Photography, Istituto Europeo di Design, Rome
2005, BA Anthropology, University of Rome La Sapienza
AWARDS
2022, PREMIO COMBAT PRIZE 22, finalist
2021, PREMIO COMBAT PRIZE 21, Recommended artist from the jury.
2021, Shutter Hub membership bursary
2016, Magnum Photo Graduates Award, Nominated
2016, Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Shortlisted
2015, The MACK Award, Commendation
2014, Workshop with Broomberg & Chanarin, London College of Communication
2011, Donkeyartprize, finalist
RESIDENCIES
2022, SIM Residency, Reykjavík, Iceland
2021, PILOTENKUECHE Online Residency Program
2017, SIM Residency, Reykjavík
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