Paola Bonavolonta'

Born in 1967 in Naples, Italy.I began very young to work with clay and colours, but I felt intimidated by all my relatives' abilities.Until I moved to New York in '99. My life with all its points of reference had totally changed. There was nothing around me that I could recognize, the roads, the neighbours, the rules not written, the role in company, everything, everything was just new. The bread, the money, the check with which I could buy a chewing gum pack, or the doorman that opened the door for me. Even the fact that no one could succeed in pronouncing my name. An inner ferment, a volcano boiling... I needed to express it in a world that did not need translations, where languages and cultures overlapped and mingled within me. In Italy I was the American, in America I was the Italian. I felt my emotions running too fast and even if I succeeded to express them, there was nobody who wanted to hear them. In that culture everything had to be cool and perfect. Smiling, smiling, stopping the difficulties from showing out, the confusion, the astonishment. The distance... the pain, or nostalgia of the colours of the sea and the sun of my land. The emotions I felt found space on the canvasses that remain dumb to listen to. I started rec...