State of Grace/Dreamcode: A Conversation with Artist Laura Cionci

This digital event will present the research and artistic practice of Italian visual artist and experiential researcher Laura Cionci, in a conversation led by Melbourne-based Sicilian curator and researcher, Miriam La Rosa. The event will touch on specific themes addressed in Cionci’s work: the relationship between art, life and nature; the notion of the term “cure”, explored as a tension between Western approaches and philosophies and ancestral wisdom and knowledge; the potential role of dreams - dream experiences - in dealing with the anxieties of the present. These topics will be discussed as part of Laura’s work which includes the multi-level State of Grace project (from 2018 and still ongoing) and its most recent development, entitled Dream Incubations (2021). The project led the artist to travel from Italy to Colombia in 2018, where she presented her research in the Body, Spirit and Soul exhibition in Australia in 2019. During these trips Laura developed a series of installations, performances and workshops, which stimulate the imagination of the participants to produce a collective public work of art, as well as a publication. Finally, Cionci and La Rosa will evaluate possible future developments in the artist's practice, drawing on their current collaboration for a large-scale project supported by the Sydney Institute, which is expected to take place between Italy and Australia in 2022-23.