Rocío Soncini

Le montagne de Vingrau – Painting

France

“ ‘The Border is your Home.’ … I’m on the Border. I am Home.” (Verdecchia, 52)

“And you? Did you change your name somewhere along the way? Does a part of you live hundreds or thousands of kilometers away? Do you have two countries, two memories?” (Verdecchia, 52)

“The intention behind my work began as a drive to define, understand and represent not the idea of, but a literal, physical sense of home.This drive is furthered by my experiences relating to geographic displacement and the traumas associated with migration. In 2014, the landscape and, most importantly, the ground (public, urban, private, rural, in all its shapes and forms) became the focus of my work. A signifier for the feeling of dislocation I experienced after moving continents back in 2005.

My “quarantine space” consists of a two-bedroom apartment located in a small village in the Pyréneés-Orientales region of France. I share the space with my husband and three-year-old son. At the moment, my studio consists of a dining room table and a couple of shelves where I keep my drawing supplies. Usually I paint/draw in the morning while my son is at daycare, but since the quarantine was imposed, and without access to my regular studio I am only able to work during his short nap time.

While the time I have to work is extremely restricted, I try to make up for any “loss time” by collecting reference images while my son I go out for our daily one-hour walk. I take pictures, collect rocks and small pieces of shattered porcelain, and sometimes we make frottage work together, mainly of the ground and mountain floor.”

Rocío Soncini was born in 1993 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the age of 12 she migrated with her family to Toronto, Canada where she received her Bachelor degree in Drawing & Painting from OCAD University. Between 2015 and 2016 she completed her undergraduate studies in Florence, Italy where she developed much of her current working practice. Rocío has exhibited her work in a number of galleries in Canada as well as in Italy and France. She currently lives and works in the Pyrenees Oriental, France.

For further information about the artist, check out: http://www.rociosoncini.com/.