Lives in L’Ile Saint Denis, an island in the outskirts of Paris
Website https://www.chloemilosazzopardi.com/
How do you describe your own art practice?
I mainly work on long-term projects mixing photography, performance and installation. My images gather moments of surreal intimacy, at the intersection of experimental and documentary photography. They generate fictional worlds, whose strangeness and sensoriality are exacerbated.
Which question or theme is central in your work?
My research revolves around our relationship with other living beings, mental health and the construction of post-capitalocene imaginaries.
The term Capitalocene refers to a geological era that the Earth entered in the 19th century. It refers to the unprecedented environmental transformations triggered by human activity in overdeveloped countries.
In my work, I try to project myself after this era in order to create imaginaries capable of going beyond the objectification of the living and repairing our relationship with it.
To do this I use photographic wandering as well as staging.
What was your first experience with art?
The first time I had a strong feeling about art was when my mother showed me some contact sheets and a black and white silver print she had made when she was young. She had taken this photo at the top of a staircase in Montmartre, the banister drew a vanishing line that plunged towards the bottom of the image. I was 13 when she showed it to me and I was fascinated by the material of the print, the blacks were like a watery and perfect surface, the visual pleasure was very strong for me. I decided to hang the print in the middle of my teenage posters, between an ad for Coca-Cola and a huge Marilyn Monroe, it was the centerpiece of my room haha.
What is your greatest source of inspiration?
Mostly life that surrounds us and research fields such as astronomy and ethology. Literature has also had an important role in the construction of my imagination, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anne Carson and B.M Koltès are writers I always come back to.
I could name dozens of artists who have helped me grow and who are still a great source of inspiration for me. I think each artist has an ecosystem made of other artists around which they will always gravitate.
For me, there are movie makers like Tarkovsky, Pasolini and Kiarostami, artists like Andy Goldsworthy, Ana Mendieta, Francis Alys, and photographers like Masao Yamamoto, Jungjin Lee, and Yorgos Yatromnolakis…
What do you need in order to create your work?
I need to wander around, to find things that surprise me. I also need time and reading.
What work or artist has most recently surprised you?
The exhibition « Forme(s) de vie » Lifeform(s) by Eric Minh Cuong Castaing at Le BAL in Paris. The exhibition featured videos at the intersection of choreography and the care process. It showed disabled people, who, with the help of dancers, regained their ability to move for a time. Someone whose legs were paralyzed went for a walk, a boxer was able to throw his fists in the air again… The emotion of the recovered movement and the memory of the body was very strong. I remember thinking that it had been a long time since I had seen such sensitive and sincere work.
