Il Veliero Painting

For Milena Nicosia, art is breath, narrative, eternity. Born in Sicily, she has been painting since she was 4 years old and has never lost the enthusiasm for it. Her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence were rich in stimuli: Alchemy, Aesthetics, Philosophy, Symbology, and Art History left her with an endless desire for experimentation. Her production has evolved hand in hand with her lived experience. There was a period dominated by the warmth of "beds," the passion of her twenties mixed with melancholy, longing, and "absences." Her voids contained presences, smells, and suggestions. Since 2005, warmth and emotions in her works have been replaced by coldness and austerity, marked by traces of "clothes stripped off the body," essences in prints that preserve a form no longer there. The color was that of an archaeological or black-and-white photographic relic. Her perception of things is intimate and sacred; the material and immaterial imprints life leaves behind are her great source of inspiration. Her works, feminine and mysterious, hold stories and life accounts even when they appear abstract or metaphysical. Her color is not realistic but emotional. Her painting style involves removing, carving, or corroding the surface, both technically and philosophically. Much like a sculptor or archaeologist, she sees the image on the surface, letting herself be carried away and inspired. The works created from 2016 to today are tied to the poetry of "contemporary ruins," narrating lives lived through the mute language of nostalgia, spaces far from any logic where the mind is the only guide. Using art, she constructs a personal inner signage in the incomprehensible ocean of existence, reconciling everything with the idea of lost beauty, her ideal refuge. She often uses the dialoguing power of objects and the fragment's power to open doors to storytelling, sometimes imaginative but hinting at premonitions and omens. Her fragments and debris symbolize fears but also rebellion and resilience. From 2020 onwards, after metabolizing the experience of Covid that marked everyone’s lives with its unexpected absurdity, Milena poured all her feelings into art, freeing her voice through material, form, sign, and vision. She used art to reconstruct a personal path through lived and projected feelings, emotions, and fears, bringing to life the “Nests.