Chantal Stropeni was born in Varese, Italy in 1996. From childhood she was obsessed with drawing as a way to archive her experiences and observations. She moved to Carrara, Italy to obtain her masters degree in fine arts. It was in Carrara that she found her passion for working in stone and creating Italian marble sculptures. She found Carrara inspired her as an artist and also as an activist for the community itself.
I asked Chantal to explain to me her passion and her motivation. These are her words, written with all of the passion she brings to her art, and to her activism.
“I chose to devote myself to stone rather casually, choosing to move to Tuscany to
attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara.
Carrara is a unique city built of the material it is surrounded by: marble.
A city of sculptors that houses about 80 art workshops, art schools, a theater, and nothing else.
Every person who decides to stay in this town cultivates a strong bond with the stone, without which this place would cease to exist.
Marble is a fascinating material, cold, candid, veined, it seems to possess a verse, a form, it seems to independently suggest the image that will come out of it.
Behind the beauty of this material comes a world of contradictions and wounds, which make 80 percent of the marble quarried, dust for the Calcium Carbonate industry; of the remaining percentage slabs for works in architecture and interior cladding, and only 0.5 percent of the material dedicated to artistic production.
Behind a city that sells itself with the face of artistic sculpture there is a vast system of exploitation
of the land with enormous profits that the city does not enjoy, remaining the poorest province in Tuscany, despite its immense environmental and cultural heritage.
But we sculptors, despite this, remain equally captivated by a material so pure and ancient, seeking our own compromise, our own balance, also proposing works of art that talk about what is happening, that have the intent to inform and raise awareness, using discarded materials to give them new life. All of my works are made from stones that were previously considered 'waste' from something bigger.
My work focuses on human relationships, the bonds and wounds between them, and the connection-physically and emotionally with the territory. There are always female figures, or parts of them, in shapes and lines that sometimes mingle with something else, in a play of associations.
The earth and the sky are but the extension of our skin, and we live immersed in them
like a jellyfish in the sea.
Dwelling is made not only of bodies, spaces, and things, but also of relationships between bodies, spaces, and things. The body is caught in its materiality, in its form that becomes the mold of every dwelling pattern, it becomes the measure of a surrounding destined to trace it, producing space from its space.
In my academic years I worked so much on the body, on its ideas, on its lines. I produced an
infinite number of live casts and then tried to assemble these pieces with the intention of creating something else, fluid, landscape, fictional. Applying the situationist idea of detournement directly on the body, transforming it into geography, a place that is inhabited and through which one inhabits.
I never quite understood what this endless quest meant until I read this Andy Warhol quote:
“I take pictures of nudes, but I don't know if I should call them nudes.
I should use a more artistic term like landscapes.”
So I really understood what the feeling was behind these forms.
Inhabiting the body, the space, the atmosphere, the home. But what is home?
We have always been strangers in front of the houses we later loved and inhabited, we have always entered the home from the outside.”
Chantal earned her master's degree in sculpture with a thesis entitled:
"I live on my feet"; written synthesis of a path and poetics that she has been pursuing for years and that still lives within her.
She has been part of several collectives, mostly politicized, a synthesis of the fact that she studied several years in an anarchist city fighting in defense of the territory she inhabits: to name a few,
"31 Up-ground" art collective, the "Athamanta" group, the "Disturb!" collective, and the "Iron Bridge" cultural association. The artist's approach is sensitive in form and content, the human figure and its social relations
are always protagonists.
Some of Chantal’s accomplishments:
TRAINING
2021-2022 Master's degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Italy.
2020-2021 Six-month Erasmus course at the Institute fur Kunz padagogic, Leipzig, Germany 2018-2019 Bachelor's degree from the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara
2014-2015 Graduated from Liceo Artistico Statale "A.Frattini" in Varese, Italy
EXHIBITIONS AND AWARDS
2023
- "Segni Distesi" group exhibition at SOMS Viggiù curated by Gabriele Cannici.
2022
-Winning photo storytelling contest organized by the Lombardy region: REGIONAL PRIZE YOUNG PEOPLE "Lombardy is of young people, protagonists in the present and builders of the future" .
2021
- "Disturbed" group exhibition at Estensioni Oltre.LoSpazio, Carrara (MS), Italy
- "Sources, Art against devastation" group exhibition at Officina d'Arte Ponte di Ferro, in collaboration with "Athamanta," Carrara (MS), Italy
2020
- "Long Story Short" group exhibition in collaboration with the Leipzig Institute of Art Education, Germany - "Artist's Trials" group exhibition in Open One Gallery, Pietrasanta (LU), Italy
2018
-Winning prize proposed by the Rotary Club of Massa and Carrara in relation to the theme 'Carrara creative city', Carrara (MS), Italy
- "Place" group exhibition at Carrara Marmotec fair in CarraraFiere, Marina di Carrara (MS), Italy
- Won scholarship with the project "Eternity" called by Maurizio Cattelan in collaboration with Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara (MS), Italy
It is a pleasure for us to feature Chantal Stropeni’s work on our website. Her passion is inspiring.
You can see all of Chantal’s work, including her italian marble sculptures on our site in the Art section. Or click on any of the product photos in this post to read more and buy Chantal's work.
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