PORTFOLIO - EMMA SCARAFIOTTI
Emma Nica is a multidisciplinary artist and storyteller experimenting with dance, photography, film, art direction and music. Before coming to study at the London College of Communication and Central Saint Marin College in London, she has lived in Italy.
Nica’s works focus on the inner reality of the psyche, in a time characterised by a growing number of disenchanted individuals. Her visual stories juxtapose childhood innocence and playfulness against melancholia. She tends to combine documentary photography with performance - giving the work a more expressive and heightened feeling. What fascinates her in performance is its power to show the non-verbal communication of human bodies.
In one of her recent projects, Nica directs her camera at her beloved brother, documenting his psychological and sexual journey after being abandoned by their father. Due to a special bond the two of them share, when photographic her brother, Nica felt like creating a portrait of herself.
“He was the place of refuge when I needed to look for myself through a lens. I could not choose my sex, yet neither my brother, but he was performing in a swinging sexual dance.”
The lens of her camera is an eye into the brother’s mind, calmly and patiently observing the process of sexual identification against the backdrop of a hash family and social stigmatisation.