People into Landscapes/ Landscapes into People. Studio Stefania Miscetti, Roma 2025
STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI is proud to present people into landscape / landscape into people. This is the first solo exhibition of Maria Di Stefano‘s work at the gallery, curated by dionæa.
The exhibition presents 16 photographic images, digital and analogue, taken between 2015 and August 2023, giving a sense of the artist’s output from her earliest work to the present day. With most of the images printed specially for the occasion, the exhibition provides the first comprehensive overview of Di Stefano’s work, be it in Italy or abroad.
The exhibition title echoes the short statement the artist usually employs to describe her work. An etymological analysis of the English word "landscape" almost suggests that people experienced landscape in art before they experienced it in real life: originally derived from sixteenth-century Dutch,
the word was first defined as, "a picture of natural inland scenery" – with terminology connected to the affirmation of landscape painting – and only later was it used to define "a view or prospect of natural inland scenery".
In a similar way, Maria di Stefano's images highlight – and occasionally enact – visions of landscapes both ‘proper’ and ‘improper’, in terms of
their physical and intangible features: natural, artificial, architectural, urban and domestic views; inhabited places in which an encounter with the Other – sought out and yet serendipitous, as if stumbled upon by chance – plays out.
The landscapes unveiled here are shaped by human, cultural, political and other forces: as such, they bring out the social and historical nature –
and complexity – of landscape more generally, as the environment that actualizes the relationship between an individual and the context they belong to. This osmotic relationship of constant and mutual influence is where the artist’s interest lies.
If a landscape can not only be the subject represented and conveyed by a medium, but itself a medium in which identities, social practices, power dynamics and appropriation become manifest, then it is the photographic eye that unveils these potentialities. What emerges here is an atmospheric, occasionally dreamlike narrative in which the human body plays the central role; it's visible, almost tangible, even when not physically present.
The exhibition presents 16 photographic images, digital and analogue, taken between 2015 and August 2023, giving a sense of the artist’s output from her earliest work to the present day. With most of the images printed specially for the occasion, the exhibition provides the first comprehensive overview of Di Stefano’s work, be it in Italy or abroad.
The exhibition title echoes the short statement the artist usually employs to describe her work. An etymological analysis of the English word "landscape" almost suggests that people experienced landscape in art before they experienced it in real life: originally derived from sixteenth-century Dutch,
the word was first defined as, "a picture of natural inland scenery" – with terminology connected to the affirmation of landscape painting – and only later was it used to define "a view or prospect of natural inland scenery".
In a similar way, Maria di Stefano's images highlight – and occasionally enact – visions of landscapes both ‘proper’ and ‘improper’, in terms of
their physical and intangible features: natural, artificial, architectural, urban and domestic views; inhabited places in which an encounter with the Other – sought out and yet serendipitous, as if stumbled upon by chance – plays out.
The landscapes unveiled here are shaped by human, cultural, political and other forces: as such, they bring out the social and historical nature –
and complexity – of landscape more generally, as the environment that actualizes the relationship between an individual and the context they belong to. This osmotic relationship of constant and mutual influence is where the artist’s interest lies.
If a landscape can not only be the subject represented and conveyed by a medium, but itself a medium in which identities, social practices, power dynamics and appropriation become manifest, then it is the photographic eye that unveils these potentialities. What emerges here is an atmospheric, occasionally dreamlike narrative in which the human body plays the central role; it's visible, almost tangible, even when not physically present.
