Natura Fera: a conversation with the ‘Requiem for the past’ artist
Last March there was an exhibition by the artist Natura Fera, aka Cinza Tammaro. It was held in Pompeii, in the spaces of the former 19th-century railway station. Sometime later, the Nziria team caught up with the artist to find out more about her, her artistic life, and the exhibition, which was quite successful.
Let’s start with the stage name, which is clearly of Latin origin. When was natura fera born and why?
I do not remember precisely when it was chosen in terms of time. Certainly, it was made public with my academic career in painting, which started in 2016. But the choice of the name has a more ancient origin: it represents a fundamental – and I could say decisive – value in my life, which is to be true to one’s nature beyond good and evil and always out of love.
Your last exhibition, “Requiem for the Past”, perfectly combines music and painting. As you stated, the nature of this exhibition has a background in the Greek ‘symballein’. So what were the artistic and musical influences on your vernissage?
It was a good experience and it is something I want to continue, although I still have more seeds to plant. For someone with a creative spirit, keeping up with so many ideas, visions, and images is sometimes difficult. But in the true artist, it is the creative spirit that is always strongest, that makes the invisible visible, and this is often decisive in the realization of a work, a project, or simply yourself.
I enjoy the fusion of different artistic disciplines such as dance, film, painting, and music. If I were to look both backward and forwards at my training, I realize that this mood for fusing all the arts has always pushed me never to exclude anything. However, it is important in many cases to let go of paths that have run their course to open up new ones and start again.
About the exhibition, I can say my artistic influences look to the greats of the past. Egon Schiele, Goya, Michelangelo, Daumier, Frida Kahlo, Picasso, the Impressionists, Expressionism. Adding other arts, it is quite natural to realize that a painting with live patterns moves according to different scores so that the choice cannot disregard a set of factors, including time.
This exhibition’s inspiration was both Impressionist and Expressionist, at times industrial. However, while I was painting, there was a moment when the name Titian visited me. Of course, it sounds bizarre, but also surprisingly true. Perhaps not everyone knows that Titian, with his intense and rapid brushstrokes, anticipated what we all know today as Impressionism.
As for the music, I couldn’t help but bring out my dark-romantic streak. So all my paintings were accompanied by songs by Placebo, Joy Division, my favorite band The Editors, Depeche Mode, and The Cure. The closing was decidedly romantic and nostalgic: Ed Sheeran, Ross Copperman with his beautiful Hunger, and Tom Odell with Another Love.
You have stated that yours ‘is an ethical art, not a moral one, whose center is anarchic’. How much anarchy, however, is there in your everyday life?
Over the centuries, the term anarchy has suffered various negative connotations due to its misuse. However, the etymological origin tells us that the primary meaning is to find the core within oneself.
Anarchy does not respond to morality, prejudice, ‘isms’, or the masses. Its value is ethical. I do not claim to change the arithmetical logic or the general trend of this reality, especially the Italian one, hypocritical and corrupt to the core, and I do not expect to be understood. I have something to offer. As I have said elsewhere to my Demon Saviour, for love always and forever.
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