Detail of Rossella Biscotti, Princess of Kasiruta, 2019
Rossella Biscotti uses montage as a gesture to reveal individual narratives and their relation to society. In her cross-media practice, cutting across filmmaking, performance and sculpture, she explores and reconstructs social and political moments from recent times through the subjectivity and experiences of individuals often posed against the backdrop of institutional systems. In the process of composing her personal encounters and oral interrogations into new stories, the site of investigation tends to leave its mark on her sculptures and installations. Traces of people’s life, objects and ideas are sensibly weaved together into new visual narratives. By examining the relevance of the recovered material from a contemporary perspective, Biscotti creates links and networks to the present, empowering the spectators’ imagination, culture and experience.
Rossella Biscotti (born 1978 in Molfetta, Italy) graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples in 2002 and attended the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2010-2011. Biscotti has received several art awards including the Premio NY, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the Italian Academy and the Columbia University in New York (2006); The City of Geneva Grand Prize at the 12th Biennial of Moving Images (2007);The 2nd Prix de Rome in the Netherlands (2009); The Premio Michelangelo at XIV International Sculpture Biennale of Carrare (2010); the Mies van der Rohe Stipendium, (2013); Premio della 16e Quadriennale d’Arte di Roma (2016), and the ACACIA Prize for Contemporary Art (2017).
Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions including Rossella Biscotti. Title One, I dreamt, Clara and other stories, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy (2024); Cable City Dance Cable City Sea, Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Center of Barcelona, Spain (2023); Rossella Biscotti, new work, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2019); Clara and Other Specimen, Fondazione Ratti, Como (2019); The City, daadgalerie, Berlin (2019); A shirt, blue pants, blue jeans, a towel, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Koln, Germany (2018); and The City, Protocinema Istanbul (2018) among others.
Additionally, her works have been exhibited at institutions and biennials such as: After Rain, Diriyah Biennale of Arts, Riyadh, KSA (2024); Indigo Waves and Other Stories, Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023); Style Congo. Heritage and Heresy, KANAL, Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2023); Clara the Rhinoceros, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2022); The Future Behind Us, Villa Arson, Nice, France (2022); Beaufort 21, Beaufort Triennale, Belgium (2021); A Story for the Future, MAXXI Rome, Italy (2021); Io dico Io - I say I, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Italy (2021); 15th Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador (2021); Eroded Landscape, Musée de Rochechouart, France (2020); Seismic Movements, Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2020); Hybrid Sculpture, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2019); I Was Born A Foreigner, Les Abattoirs - FRAC Occitanie Toulouse Château d'Assier, France (2019); The Humans, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2018); and The world as prison?, IVAM, Valencia, Spain (2018) among others.
She lives and works between Rotterdam and Brussels.
Sean O’Toole reviews Rossella Biscotti's first institutional anthological exhibition at Castello di Rivoli.
Anchoring her works in extensive research, Rossella Biscotti's art serves as a form of forensic investigation, foregrounding issues of collective significance.
Agnieszka Gratza's review of Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024: After Rain.
Rossella Biscotti speaks exclusively to Front Runner from the land of olive trees – Molfetta in Bari – and the city that baptized her as an artist: Napoli.
Rossella Biscotti’s current show at Witte de With subtly lays bare how sentient beings uprooted by colonialism refused to take root in foreign soil.
Rike Frank on Rossella Biscotti at the daadgalerie, Berlin.
Cathryn Drake review Rossella Biscotti's solo show Three Works and a Script at Blitz, Malta.
9000 years back: The artist and DAAD scholarship holder Rossella Biscotti brings vanished civilizations into the present.
Showing at Istanbul’s Protocinema, the artist’s new film uses the ancient site of Çatalhöyük to investigate a community and its collapse.
A review of Rossella Biscotti's video work The City on view at Protocinema.
Throughout her career, Rossella Biscotti has confronted both present and past history by creating works that explore the collective significance of sometimes dramatic, but always poignant events.
Brian Dillon review Rossella Biscotti's solo exhibition at Museion, Bolzano.
Rossella Biscotti's sculptural installation Come fare?, for Citylife, Milan.
