Novella Oliana, Ricerca-Creazione. Manifesto per uno spazio necessario, 2026

How can the Mediterranean, a complex space, be represented through artistic devices? How can the body and gestures connect with artistic research and be transformed within the spatiality circumscribed by the sea’s surface? In relation to this aquatic surface, how is contemporary photography evolving, and what is the role of artistic research in understanding the world today?

These questions, which have driven her research from the beginning and are its focus, allow Novella Oliana to explore the Mediterranean both as an artistic subject and as a metaphorical territory of investigation, not through but together with art. The meaning of research-creation, or “research with art,” is precisely to reveal a fabric, a warp and weft that flows from one’s own work through that of others; these threads intertwine with multiple other intuitions, visions, and concepts to create a dense network of connections.

Oliana considers research-creation as a space of generative creation, a place where contact and relationship emerge. The potential of this practice, which consists of shaping new fields of thought and reshaping the spaces of everyday action through art, is certainly due to its interdisciplinary approach as a complex form of thought. The Mediterranean thus becomes a necessary space for the creation of performative images generated by gestures and a manifesto for an artistic, political, and cultural repositioning.

READING INSTRUCTIONS
Dear reader, you can read this book in three ways: you can follow the story, imagining in your mind the connections and relationships suggested by the text; or you can focus exclusively on the works and the artist’s book, allowing your eyes to create visual associations and activate your perception. A third option is to take a more academic approach, following the references suggested by the arrows in brackets in the text, which allow you to relate the visual works to what you are reading. In this way, you will have the opportunity to weave a new narrative that, anchored by the structure of the discourse, considers artistic works as the common thread through which your entire new vision takes shape. Happy reading.