Claudia Amatruda: When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebra
Shhh: Southern high hidden histories
Alessia Rollo
More about the artist:
Web: Claudia Amatruda
IG: @claudiamatruda
A female body hangs from the shoulders of a man who is walking towards a green spot. The gaze of the young bespectacled woman catches the spectator’s. She forces him to observe in a calm and steadfast way something. Everything works in that image and everything is out of place. Claudia’s body, anything but an abandoned and resigned one hanging from the imposing man, is the thought axis that forces you to reflect and give up everything you know. Entering Claudia Amatruda for the first time I had the impression of being a detective on a mistery trail. In this interview I tried to follow the tracks of presence, absences, suspensions and fragments through which this talented and complex photographer wants to tell us about the exploration of her body limits, the weight of her relationships with the others and the need to find other visual solutions to the concept of able-bodied figures. Claudia born in Foggia in 1995 is the first beautiful hidden story of Southern Italy that we are getting ready to hear.
Alessia Rollo:
Claudia, Naiade is your first photo-book. Can you tell u show photography entered in your life?
Claudia Amatruda:
Photography tiptoed into my life at 16. It was a slow discovery, a game until she entered by force, at the age of 19, after the revelation of my illness, awakening me from the shock of that discovery and literally making me get out of bed to document what was happening to me. It was an essential way out of the chaos of the illness early years. Soon after, I abandoned the idea of enrolling in the medical faculty and started attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Foggia and at the same time a Master’s in Documentary Photography in Pescara. I started documenting everything, even unconsciously. The camera came along with me from hospital to hospital. More than photos, they were snapshots. When I was too sick, I had my mother photographing me. I started studying photography as a therapeutic mean: the photo book came after 2 years of collecting material.
Alessia Rollo:
What’s your relationship with photography like?
Claudia Amatruda:
At first, I really thought that photography had a saving role for me. And perhaps was like that during the entire period of creation of the Naiade project, I never underestimated the therapeutic significance that photography had for me. Naiade is a water nymph, a relief that for me is not only metaphorical but also physical: in fact, in the water my pain subsides and everything calms down. Photography, like water, is therapeutic and has been used by many authors to metabolize any type of pain or difficult intimate situation. It was the same for me. After a few years, however, I realized that photography does not save you, it helps you, but you are the one to save yourself with the help of the people who love you. Now photography for me is a place of freedom, it’s the purest vital experience. In the future, who knows, I’m very curious to know what roles it’ll still play in my life!
Alessia Rollo:
Tell us about Naiade
Claudia Amatruda:
Naiade represents myself, it’s my story. The project began in 2017 with a series of self-portraits in the pool, the only place where I felt at home, where I could be myself without any pain; then it grew up during a Master in Photographic Project in Pescara, years in which I was under the guidance of Michele Palazzi, the first professor who believed in me and encouraged me to bring out through photography everything I was experiencing. It was then transformed into a photographic diary, and in 2019, thanks to the help of my photo editor Fiorenza Pinna, the project turned into a photographic book produced through crowdfunding, in which snapshots, self-portraits and documentary photography alternate accompanying me in the discovery of my own illness. After the release of the book there were presentations around Italy, and it seemed surreal to be able to talk about this work to so many people and receive continuous thanks from them for highlighting this invisible suffering through art. Naiade was, first of all, a therapy for me and created a network of empathy, openness and sharing from people that I never expected. I realized that I have introduced the idea of a body that exceeds social standards and gives space and voice to all those who feel like they have a different body.
Alessia Rollo:
What is your relationship with the body like and what role does photography play in representing it?
Claudia Amatruda:
The relationship with my body is one of continuous learning. I try to give it the required care, the love it needs, but it’s never enough. The disease is constantly evolving, so is the body. This is why there’s a continuous effort on my part to understand what my body limit is and what its possibilities are, day by day. Photography allows me to explore this relationship between disease and the body, and through self-portraits it can become anything I want: a vehicle, a stage, a moving horizon, a visible testimony in the invisible.
Alessia Rollo:
In your last work I noticed that your photographic language has changed. Can you tell us about your new way of thinking about the body, its weight and relationship with the other?
Claudia Amatruda:
After Naiade, I no longer use photography as a therapeutic and acceptance tool, but as a simple mean: I want my body to become a narrative tool. I constantly have a question in my head: “How can I represent the transformations that the disease carries out on me without falling into victimhood or heroism?” I do not know if I have yet found an answer to this visually, but I thought of staging the reality I’m living by giving more importance to the process behind each photograph, thinking and rethinking. I look at the relationships with the others, relationships in which I notice the difficulties of the others in being next to a person like me; I notice the physical and mental weight of my body that I carry around and then that I make others carry around because I often need to be carried in their arms when there are stairs or climbs, or I need be pushed in a wheelchair. But fortunately it’s not only this, there is much more. Photography is really giving me the possibility of being able to touch important themes by representing myself in total freedom
Alessia Rollo:
Do you have visual models that have been an inspiration for you, in the past and now?
Claudia Amatruda:
I have a couple of exhibitions planned but I would like to collaborate with other artists and why not, work on other people’s bodies, but this requires a complexity of gaze that I feel I still have to reach to represent bodies and stories that, simply, are not mine.
Alessia Rollo:
Projects and collaborations? Have you ever thought of getting out of the autobiographical to work on other people’s bodies?
Claudia Amatruda:
I have a couple of exhibitions planned but I would like to collaborate with other artists and why not, work on other people’s bodies, but this requires a complexity of gaze that I feel I still have to reach to represent bodies and stories that, simply, are not mine.
Alessia Rollo:
What do you wish for the future? What images would you like to see?
Claudia Amatruda:
I don’t like talking about the future, I focus a lot on the present, but I certainly hope to preserve the taste for surprising myself for everything that surrounds me and to keep my gaze free from pressures or prejudices, it takes a great daily effort for this. On the other hand, from society I’m hoping for more attention towards people with disabilities in terms of accessibility, communication and representation. With the times we are experiencing, freedom of expression of body uniqueness is becoming more and more popular, which comes out of the private sphere and becomes shareable and understandable. Overall, these are images that I would like to see more and more in art and in everyday life.
