Il bacio, 2021

Michela Vicentini  

Born in Milan in 1989, Michela is always been fascinated by Art and by the research of the perfect Colour combination. 

In 2003 Michela started an art diploma at Umberto Boccioni art college following the art courses under the experimental program called “Leonardo Da vinci" this included; Fine Art, Graphic Design, elements of Architecture, Sculpture, Engraving and prints of Etching, chemistry and many other Humanistic and Scientific classes. 

During these period Michela spent one year in central America and this certainly influenced her sense of colour combinations and forms.  After five years of Art courses she took a degree in international, multimedia communication and Marketing, at Pavia University. 

When at the end of her studies in 2013 she has decided to moved to London where she developed her art concept. Michela grow up in the 90's in Italy when the idea of modern women was not as developed as in other countries. One of the latest report on gender equality in Italy from 2014 is stating how still then and still today women are not as valued by society as men are. 

Below some extracts of the Report:

"Italy is ranked amongst the countries in the EU with the lowest gender equality, according to the European Gender Equality Index. Its performance is above the EU average in one area only, namely health, thanks to Italian women's long life-expectancy. In any other respect the situation is far from being satisfactory. Policies to re-address the gender unbalance have been cautious, while progress in the legal framework has been promoted mainly by Directives coming from the UE or by pressures of the civil society. Italy lacks of a proper gender infrastructure at central level to promote, coordinate and monitor gender equality initiatives. 

Employment and reconciliation of work and family life: 

Female employment rates remain low, especially in Southern Italy and in general for women with low education. Anti-discrimination laws have been adopted, but gender gaps are still large."

"Italy has never elaborated an effective strategy to favour the inclusion of women into the labour market, based on the integration of different policy areas (including education, taxation, etc.). Two kinds of measures to improve women's employment have been mainly promoted: provision of childcare services and incentives (of various amount and length) for employers who hire women."

"Sexual violence was acknowledged as a 'crime against the person' only in 1996. In 2009, a law introduced stalking as a type of punishable offence. In 2013, the Council of Europe convention on violence against women and domestic violence."

Michela started realising this extreme difference already at a very young age. Especially since she grew up in a family mainly run from women who are also ahead of a companies since 1996 when her grandfather passed away. Every time she was confronting herself to other realities she was surprised how women were consider and in some cases undermined but still expected to fulfilled "their duties"as women.

On the contrary once moved to UK in 2013 she encountered how many women were more independent and obtained very high roles in the work environment and again it felt  often these women had to act as "Men" in order to be accepted in these roles. 

From this is clear that women had and still have to be  fighting for their place into society. Somehow this have pushed them to start adopting man's behaviours creating different type of stereotypes and a different view of what is an acceptable or not acceptable behaviour. Many international companies have already started to highlight this inequality in Particular Michela was  inspired from the advertising campaigns that Nike started running since 2017 trying to empower women, the best example is "dream crazier" from 2020.

 However She feels that this is still a difficult subject and often is easy to mislead the conversation and tend more to one side or the other missing the point of equality. Often women become Men haters and can't find a equal space in the work environment as well as their own personal life.

After coming to this conclusion she wants to highlight how society is functioning these days and how through colours and shapes it's possible to get to people and try to have a self-analysis of oneself to rebalance a perfect collaboration  between the two sex from aspects like gender and sexuality to all women's strength translated into beauty and colours “ A New language that speaks at an international level".

Michela identify her art as “Art of Meanings" as each one of her painting has an intrisicate message for the public.  W.E. (women empowerment) + (We and she includes herself in the painting as Woman) which represents women "Weakness" as strengths and highlight the beauty of the woman mind and heart.

The good of men: A woman touch of "Weakness" "which make a man greater" and these strength that society recognise as such. The two of Us: The combination of the two as perfect balance as complementary as well as a reflection of one another. Society: deeper description of society and it's acceptance an it's taboo.

Michela use of colours wants to recall sensations and often has a meaningful connotation to feelings as well as shapes and forms. Cubes, steps and Spheres are often a abstract representation of society and people. Michela use mainly acrylic colours but she likes to mix techniques and materials.