Biography &
Artist Statement
Pasquale Scognamiglio
An interdisciplinary practice rooted in the Mediterranean, where memory, mythology, spirituality and contemporary experience meet.
Pasquale Scognamiglio is a visual artist based in Naples. His practice moves across painting, works on paper, printmaking, mixed media, moving image and public art.
His work develops from an ongoing investigation into symbols, cultural memory and the ways in which images from the past continue to inhabit contemporary experience.
An evolving artistic practice
Born and based in Naples, Pasquale Scognamiglio developed his artistic practice through a continuous dialogue between traditional techniques and contemporary visual languages.
He studied Experimental Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, where his early research developed around painting, drawing and graphic arts. The study of traditional printmaking established a particular attention to the sign, the trace, material and the physical construction of the image.
His academic research later expanded into Visual Arts and Public Art, extending the relationship between image and surface towards space, environment and collective experience.
Studies in film direction and screenwriting further introduced narrative, time and moving image into his visual research, contributing to an increasingly interdisciplinary approach.
Throughout this evolution, Naples and the Mediterranean have remained central points of reference. The sea, sacred traditions, mythology, popular imagery and the cultural stratifications of Southern Italy repeatedly emerge as elements of a personal visual vocabulary.
Rather than defining his work through a single technique or style, Scognamiglio approaches each medium as a different possibility of thought. Painting, drawing, engraving, watercolour, found materials, video and public interventions become different ways of exploring the same questions surrounding memory, identity, spirituality and transformation.
What survives within us
My work begins with the idea that images, symbols and myths never completely disappear. They remain within collective and personal memory, returning in different forms.
I am interested in the invisible relationships connecting the present with what came before us: ancient stories, sacred images, popular traditions, family memories, places and symbols that continue to shape the way we understand reality.
The Mediterranean is a central territory within this research. I do not consider it simply as a geographical place, but as a layered space in which different cultures, religions, myths and histories have continually met, disappeared and re-emerged.
Naples embodies this condition with particular intensity. Sacred and profane, beauty and decay, devotion and superstition, antiquity and everyday life coexist within the same visual landscape.
For this reason, figures such as Partenope, religious icons, animals, vessels, amulets, the sea and fragments of popular culture may appear within my work alongside more intimate and autobiographical elements.
I do not use these images as nostalgic references. I am interested in what happens when an ancient symbol encounters a contemporary experience, and when something belonging to collective memory becomes personal again.
Technique follows this same principle. I choose the medium according to what the image requires. Painting allows colour and matter to generate an emotional space. Engraving transforms the image into pressure and trace. Watercolour introduces fragility and transparency. Drawing is the most immediate form of thought. Video introduces time, while public art allows the work to enter into a direct relationship with place and community.
Across these different languages, my research remains centred on transformation: the possibility that an image inherited from another time may return to the present with a new meaning.
Art becomes a space in which memory can change form without disappearing.
Academic formation
Experimental Painting
Academy of Fine Arts of Naples
Visual Arts — Public Art
Academy of Fine Arts of Naples
Film Direction & Screenwriting
Film studies and audiovisual research
Media & languages
The practice is interdisciplinary. Each medium is approached as a specific language within a broader artistic research.
Painting
Colour, matter and mixed media as spaces for symbolic and emotional construction.
Works on Paper
Drawing and watercolour explore immediacy, fragility, memory and the relationship between image and support.
Printmaking
Traditional graphic techniques investigate sign, pressure, matter and trace.
Media & Video
Moving image introduces narrative, duration and audiovisual experimentation.
Public Art
Interventions in public space establish a relationship between image, place and collective experience.