Autore: Carmela Loiacono

This year, 2026, German artist Petra Dippold-Goetz participated in two International Art Exhibitions between Basilicata (Matera) and Puglia (Lecce), highlighting the extraordinary complexity of a pictorial research driven by parallel and complementary impulses. Within the framework of contemporary Informal Art, the artist’s investigation moves simultaneously along two inseparable tracks: the lyrical introspection of the soul and the civic responsibility of environmental witness. The exhibitions in Matera and Lecce do not depict a chronological evolution; instead, they offer a synergistic look at an eclectic production capable of coexisting, within the same historical moment, the most fluid gestural abstraction and the material density of social critique.

1) NEW HORIZONS – Authenticity, Resilience and Renewal in Matera, at Casa Cava, from March 21 to 27, 2026 with her paintings: “Floral Rhapsody” and “Whispers of Light and Shadow”. Within this millennial setting, the curatorial selection sought to give voice to the artist’s most intimate, visceral, and psychological dimension, presenting two works where painting is pure action and kinetic energy. The painting “Floral Rhapsody” has been a vital and radiant explosion of blues, yellows, and magenta accents applied with thick palette knife strokes, celebrating chromatic instinct and pure joie de vivre. “Whispers of Light and Shadow”: a canvas with a powerful dramatic dynamic, furrowed by dark filaments and slashes of white light that evoke the choreography of sound, translating the invisible dynamism of emotional states into painting.

INTERVIEW with Petra Dippold-Goetz concerning the International Art Exhibition NEW HORIZONS – Authenticity, Resilience and Renewal in Matera, at Casa Cava, from March 21 to 27, 2026.

Carmela Loiacono – Vulnerability in your works transforms into creative strength, making change a necessary and generative act. How does this tension between fragility and strength reflect your personal approach to artistic creation?
Petra Dippold-Goetz – Vulnerability is an essential part of my artistic process. I don’t try to hide it, I work with it. In moments of uncertainty, fragility, or emotional intensity, something very honest emerges, and this honesty becomes the foundation of the work. For me, strength does not mean control or perfection. It comes from allowing things to break, to shift, and to evolve. The tension between fragility and strength is where transformation happens, where something raw becomes meaningful. My approach to creation is deeply intuitive: I trust that even the most delicate or unstable moments carry a creative force. In this way, vulnerability is not a weakness, but a starting point, a space where change becomes necessary, and where new visual languages can arise.

Carmela Loiacono — It was a true pleasure to meet you in Matera, talk and exchange ideas about the exhibition, and also to spend time together! Looking at your paintings “Floral Rhapsody” and “Whispers of Light and Shadow” in the exhibition space at Casa Cava, what emotions or reflections did experiencing the show live and seeing the works interact with the city and the light of the place evoke for you?
Petra Dippold-Goetz – Experiencing the exhibition at Casa Cava was deeply moving for me. The space itself, carved into the ancient stone, carries a quiet memory of time that seemed to resonate with my works “Floral Rhapsody” and “Whispers of Light and Shadow.” Seeing them there, surrounded by the soft, ever-changing light of Matera, felt almost like a dialogue between the paintings and the city — between fragility and strength, past and present. During the days of the Ceremonia di apertura Matera 2026, everything was intensified: the energy, the emotions, the sense of connection. I felt incredibly proud and grateful to be part of such a powerful moment, where art, place, and human experience came together so naturally and beautifully.

Carmela Loiacono – “Floral Rhapsody” is gestural and vibrant, expressing immediate authenticity: color flows freely, suggesting openness, energy, and trust in the transformative process. “Whispers of Light and Shadow”, more layered and contrasted, introduces tension and fragmentation, showing how resilience emerges through breaks and recompositions. How do you interpret this journey from spontaneous expression to conscious reconstruction?
Petra Dippold-Goetz – The journey from spontaneous expression to conscious reconstruction reflects my intuitive way of working. In “Floral Rhapsody”, I allow the moment to guide me completely, it is about trust, freedom, and surrendering to the flow of color and emotion. There is no control, only presence. With “Whispers of Light and Shadow”, the process becomes more reflective. Layers, contrasts, and interruptions emerge, almost like traces of experience. Fragmentation is not destruction, but transformation, a necessary step to rebuild something deeper and more aware. For me, this transition is not a break, but a continuation: from pure intuition to a more conscious dialogue with the canvas. It mirrors life itself, where openness and vulnerability evolve into strength, resilience, and a new form of harmony.

Carmela Loiacono – I know you are a very strong and active woman, what are your future projects or new artistic directions you wish to explore after the experience of this exhibition?
Petra Dippold-Goetz – After this experience, I feel even more drawn to focus on truly meaningful and high-quality exhibitions, like this one, where art is given the space to connect deeply with people and place. In terms of my artistic direction, I want to return more strongly to Trash Art and environmentally critical works, engaging with the urgent issues of our time and transforming them into visual narratives. At the same time, it remains essential for me to create pieces that bring lightness and beauty, works that can touch people, uplift them, and remind them of the fragile and precious beauty of our world. For me, art will always move between these two poles: awareness and hope.

2) NATURAL FLOW – The 2nd Edition 2026 in Lecce at MUST – Museo Storico della città di Lecce, from July 03 to 18, 2026 with her paintings: “Il gioco dell onde I”, “Il gioco dell onde II” and “Pollution”. Here, the curatorial exploration focused on the painting-sculpture of Petra Dippold-Goetz and her ecological activism through a core of three works of great material and conceptual impact: “Il gioco dell onde I” and“Il gioco dell onde II“: a powerful marine diptych dominated by a dense layering of blues and lime whites. Working the surface to a heavy thickness, the artist mimics the ancestral force of ocean currents, as “a dance of waves” while reminding us of the profound fragility of marine ecosystems.
The painting “Pollution” has been a perfect manifesto of her Trash Art production. In this work-artifact, the canvas incorporates and exorcises heavy pours of cement paste, industrial cardboard, and exhausted paint tubes. The discarded object is re-semanticized, transforming the artwork into a visual scream against the global devastation of the Anthropocene.

Comprehensive Critical Overview
The profound value of these two exhibitions lies precisely in showing the coexistence of these two worlds. Petra Dippold-Goetz does not choose between the aesthetics of nature and the harshness of social critique, nor does she abandon lyricism for denunciation. On the contrary, the two dimensions feed into each other: the fluid gesture digging into interiority (Matera) coexists with the materiality of marine currents and ecological denunciation (Lecce). It is precisely this parallel duality that establishes her research as one of the most fertile, necessary, and poetically militant voices on the current international art scene. – Dr. Carmela Loiacono, Art Curator

INTERVIEW with El-ham Tabsoba
Carmela Loiacono talks with El-ham Tabsoba who took part in the International Art Exhibition NEW HORIZONS – Authenticity, Resilience and Renewal in Matera, at Casa Cava, from March 21 to 27, 2026.

Carmela Loiacono – In works like Over and Beyond and Looking Through You, you transform materials such as shredded recycled plastic into layered textures that convey resilience and identity. How does the tactile process of creating these surfaces shape the way you perceive vulnerability, strength, and transformation in your subjects?
El-ham Tabsoba – The tactile process is very central to how I think through the work. When I apply shredded plastic into the painted surface, I am not just building texture, I am working through resistance. The material does not behave like paint. It resists, overlaps, and sometimes disrupts the image.
That process mirrors how I understand vulnerability and strength. Vulnerability is not smooth or controlled. It is layered, unpredictable, and sometimes uncomfortable. Strength, in my work, is not the absence of that fragility, but the ability to hold it together over time.
Transformation happens in that tension. A material that was once discarded begins to carry meaning. In the same way, the figures I paint hold emotional weight that is not always visible at first glance, but becomes present through the surface.

Carmela Loiacono – Your use of blue skin tones removes conventional markers of race and nationality, emphasizing a shared human experience. How do you approach the balance between individuality and universality in your portraits, especially in relation to the neurodiverse patterns that inspire your creative process?
El-ham Tabsoba – Using blue allows me to step away from fixed ideas of identity. It removes immediate assumptions about race or nationality, which creates space for a more open emotional reading of the work.
At the same time, each figure still carries something very personal. I think of them as individuals first, but individuals that exist within shared emotional experiences. The balance comes from allowing specific gestures, expressions, and body language to remain intact, while the colour shifts how we interpret them.
The patterns and structures in my work are influenced by how I perceive complexity and repetition. They are not meant to define the figure, but to exist alongside it, almost like an internal rhythm. This is where individuality and universality meet, in something that feels both deeply personal and widely relatable.

Carmela Loiacono – Environmental consciousness and sustainability are central to your practice, as you repurpose discarded plastic into meaningful textures. How does this dialogue with materials mirror the themes of resilience and renewal that run through your work?
El-ham Tabsoba – Working with discarded plastic is both a practical and conceptual decision. I collect these materials from everyday environments, places where they are often overlooked or treated as waste.
By bringing them into the work, I am not trying to hide their origin. Instead, I want them to remain visible, to carry their history into the painting. This act of repurposing mirrors the themes of resilience and renewal that run through my work.
Just as the material is given a second life, the figures I paint often exist in a space of becoming. They are not fixed. They are layered, evolving, and shaped by what they carry. The material and the subject begin to reflect each other.

Carmela Loiacono – Looking forward, how do you envision expanding your exploration of identity, memory, and texture in future projects? Are there new mediums, techniques, or concepts you are eager to experiment with?
El-ham Tabsoba – Moving forward, I am interested in expanding the relationship between material and space. I want to explore how these textures can move beyond the canvas, possibly into more immersive or sculptural forms.
I am also curious about deepening the idea of memory within the work, how surfaces can hold traces of time, not just visually but physically. This may involve experimenting with new materials or combining different techniques while still staying rooted in painting.
At the core, I want to continue exploring how identity is shaped, not as something fixed, but as something layered, shifting, and continuously unfolding.

INTERVIEW with Utaellamarie Peter
Carmela Loiacono talks with Utaellamarie Peter who took part in the International Art Exhibition NEW HORIZONS – Authenticity, Resilience and Renewal in Matera, at Casa Cava, from March 21 to 27, 2026.

Carmela Loiacono – Your work “Rolling up that hill” reinterprets the iconic image of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, introducing a contemporary element such as the electric scooter. How did this combination of Romantic contemplation and technological acceleration come about, and what reflection on resilience did you aim to convey through it?
Utaellamarie Peter – Everything – fast – with no effort: this image symbolises human entitlement in an age of acceleration and self-optimisation. It highlights the contradiction between the search for meaning, self-reflection and tranquillity on the one hand, and constant acceleration, supposed improvement and the inevitable superficiality that results from it on the other. The e-scooter represents technology that spares us effort whilst increasing our speed. The search for meaning and inner peace whilst gazing over the mountain peaks cannot – absurdly enough – be achieved quickly enough.

Carmela Loiacono – In your work, there is often a delicate balance between humor and introspection. How does your background in chemical engineering and environmental protection influence the way you observe landscapes, humans, and technology in your paintings? 
Utaellamarie Peter – I am a rational person with a scientific mindset. My professional engagement with the environment, ecology and climate change has not created my awareness of the consequences of humanity’s appropriation of planet Earth, but has reinforced it without disregarding my own contribution.. I like to translate my close observation of current events – of human greed for faster, higher, further, regardless of the cost – into my figurative, surreal paintings in best case combined with humour and my own characteristic ironic perspective – anything else would be too devastating.

Carmela Loiacono — The horizon in “Rolling up that hill” becomes a metaphor for possibility, choice, and renewal. How do you interpret the concept of personal and creative rebirth, and how do you think viewers can reconnect with their own inner perspective when facing your work?
Utaellamarie Peter – The only hope that, in my view, is expressed in the painting is that the e-scooter is leaning unused against the rock. Perhaps it will remain there permanently? Perhaps, as he looks out over the mountains, the hiker is reminded of Seneca’s ‘Per aspera ad astra’? That would be fine.

Carmela Loiacono – Looking to the future, what artistic projects or explorations interest you most? Are there new elements, themes, or materials you would like to integrate into your upcoming works?
Utaellamarie Peter – I have many thematic ideas that follow the path of surrealism. A figurative Surrealism that often takes a critical look at reality without losing the sense of humor – hard enough these days. That is my current focus. Other directions, such as the abstractions in the “bunt” series or the serie “Hybride”, are in the back of my mind and will surely resurface when the opportunity arises.

INTERVIEW with Anna Zhang
Carmela Loiacono talks with Anna Zhang who took part in the International Art Exhibition NEW HORIZONS – Authenticity, Resilience and Renewal in Matera, at Casa Cava, from March 21 to 27, 2026.

Carmela Loiacono – In TO YOU, AFTER ALL TIME, the continuous cycle of melting and regrowth visualizes the process of grief. How did you find a balance between representing a deeply personal loss and creating a universal language that can speak to anyone? 
Anna Zhang – I chose not to tell a specific story, but to translate the feeling of grief into a visual system—its repetition, instability, and transformation. By using abstract processes like melting and regrowth, the work leaves space for viewers to project their own experiences. That distance allows something deeply personal to become universally relatable.

Carmela Loiacono – The animation transforms pain into fluid visual matter. Can you share how your choices in movement, color, and rhythm helped shape such an intimate experience?
Anna Zhang – I treated the animation as a living system. Forms continuously change but never fully return, reflecting how grief evolves. The color palette is restrained and gradual, while the rhythm moves between stillness and slow transformation—almost like breathing—making the experience feel intimate rather than overwhelming.

Carmela Loiacono – Memory in your work emerges as an ever-evolving element. Looking back on the creative process of this video, how has the work transformed your own personal understanding of loss and remembrance?
Anna Zhang – It shifted my view of grief from something to resolve into something to live with. Memory became less fixed and more fluid—constantly reshaped over time. The process helped me accept that loss doesn’t disappear, it transforms and stays with us in different ways.

Carmela Loiacono – What future directions or projects do you envision for your video and animation practice, and how do you plan to continue exploring emotional transformation through new visual languages?
Anna Zhang – I’m interested in expanding into installations and interactive systems, where viewers can physically engage with these transformations. I’m also exploring AI and simulation as tools to build new visual languages—less about representing emotion, and more about letting people experience it through change and time.

INTERVIEW with Rubén Avendaño
Carmela Loiacono talks with Rubén Avendaño who took part in the International Art Exhibition NEW HORIZONS – Authenticity, Resilience and Renewal in Matera, at Casa Cava, from March 21 to 27, 2026.

Carmela Loiacono – You often speak about attention rather than intention.  While making “Playa Vista”, was there a moment when you simply knew it was time  to stop and stay with what was unfolding?  What do you notice in yourself in that instant?
Rubén Avendaño – At Playa Vista, I saw a couple with their dog, sharing the last light of the day. Then, for a brief moment, she stepped into her own space and turned toward the horizon. Her silhouette revealed itself, held gently by the trees, while the sun softened into a tone that felt almost intentional, though it wasn’t mine. It all aligned without effort.
In that instant, something in me becomes still and receptive. There is no urge to direct or interfere, only to witness and respond. I feel a sense of recognition, like I am being let in on something that was already happening long before I arrived. What remains is gratitude, for the light, for the timing, and for the chance to hold a fragment of that experience and carry it forward. 

Carmela Loiacono – The shift from color to black and white feels less like an effect and more like a quiet transition in perception.  Did that shift belong to the moment itself, or did it reveal itself later, with distance? 
Rubén Avendaño – The shift to black and white didn’t feel like a choice I made in the moment. It came later, with a bit of distance. But when I looked back, it felt like it had always belonged that way. Sometimes color carries too much information, and with time you begin to see what was underneath it. The black and white revealed something more essential, something that was already there but harder to recognize at first.

Carmela Loiacono – Your images seem to hold space rather than define it.  How do you recognize when a photograph has said enough, and it’s time to leave the rest open?
Rubén Avendaño – For me, a photograph feels complete when it stops asking for anything. There’s a point where adding more begins to take away from it. I try to listen for that. It’s subtle, but it’s there. When the image holds its own weight without explanation, I know it’s time to step back and leave the rest open.

Carmela Loiacono – Your work is deeply rooted in presence — in being there, attentive to what emerges.  When the work travels without you, do you feel that presence remains, or does it transform into something else?
Rubén Avendaño – Presence changes once the work leaves me. When I’m there, it’s very physical, very immediate. But once the photograph travels, it becomes something quieter. I don’t think the presence disappears, but it transforms. It belongs to the viewer now, to their own pace and their own way of seeing. What I felt in the moment becomes just one layer among many.

Carmela Loiacono – As your practice continues to evolve, what are you currently moving toward?
Is there something you feel you are beginning to see, or understand, that you weren’t ready for before?
Rubén Avendaño – Lately, I feel like I’m moving toward less. Less certainty, less control. I’m becoming more interested in what I don’t immediately understand. There’s a kind of patience I didn’t have before, a willingness to stay with things longer without needing to resolve them. I think I’m starting to see that not everything needs to be translated. Some things are meant to remain just as they are.

INTERVIEW with Marc Raynaud
Carmela Loiacono talks with Marc Raynaud who took part in the International Art Exhibition NEW HORIZONS – Authenticity, Resilience and Renewal in Matera, at Casa Cava, from March 21 to 27, 2026.

Carmela Loiacono – Your works, including “Concert à Venise”, “Dialogue avec l’invisible, Amalfitana Coast”, “Femme étrusque songeuse” and “Matin calme aux Marquises”, reveal a dialogue between memory, myth, and landscape. How do you transform fragments of experience and place into a poetic act of resilience through your collages? 
Marc Raynaud – The Invisible is everywhere. « Don’t forget to draw what you do not see », used to tell my former teacher at The  Fine Arts School in Paris.  
Memory is what is the most visible, what we have seen. The Invisible is the Future, what is lying behind us, in our back as the African say. Our Past is in front of us. Under the rocks of my Art Studio in front of Capri, the mermaids became stone statues when Ulysses stopped by with his navigators. I guess other people also see these invisible queens.
The spot is called « Punta Licosa » (Mermaid Point) in San Marco di Castellabate where yo can visit my Art Studio.

Carmela Loiacono – Collage, for you, is a slower, contemplative process in a world dominated by photography. How does this meditative approach influence your perception of authenticity and the renewal of the inner self? 
Marc Raynaud – I practice Collage silently in the morning before anything moves in the house. So immediately I am back into childhood and can think about the charming schoolteachers I had when I was four or six (and not sixty four). I am still in love with them like all my little classmates.
I can see all the little boys in the classroom and name them all on the class picture of the year. I may even pray for them for no reason and without them knowing. Or may be they now.
Who knows?
I slowly take off in my souvenirs and mix them with new dreams and songs that I have not sung for decades. Doing so I meditate and follow with humility my cutter and the sheet of paper who drive me towards the emerging piece of Art that progressively appears. I am grateful to the glue, the tool and the paper that allow this to happen.

Carmela Loiacono – Across your travels from Africa and Asia to Polynesia and southern Italy your works capture both external landscapes and inner journeys. How does the act of recomposing reality through collage allow you to explore renewal and personal transformation?
Marc Raynaud – Recomposing Reality is fun. Another Art teacher of mine, who was crazy enough, used to tell us that who are allowed to lie when drawing or painting  because nobody else sees what we see anyway.
When practicing Collage, silence and patience allow me to discern among all the lies I have been taught when I was a child and until now.
Getting aware of them allow me to feel lighter and even freer today. Freedom, the great privilege of the artist!
The same miracle happens when I realize  all that was forbidden when I was a young boy. Overcoming these forbidden barriers allowed me to discover new landscapes and worlds.
Without these former barriers I would not have the same personality and pleasure today. Thank you Mum!

Carmela Loiacono – Looking forward, are there new directions, projects, or places that inspire you to further develop your collage practice and continue exploring the interplay between memory, light, and identity?
Marc Raynaud – Recently I have made a serie of abstract collages that may look like dating from the 30’ or 50’. Playing and creating in the time when I was born and before was an unexpected and very joyful journey. The result was a broader view of my art.
Even if my Muse did not like this serie of abstract collages too much at the beginning, I showed them to visitors who came to my Art studio near Capri.
And some of them who knew me immediately said « Now we know you and understand you even better ! ».

INTERVIEW with Bassem H. Boustany
Carmela Loiacono talks with Bassem H. Boustany who took part in the International Art Exhibition NEW HORIZONS – Authenticity, Resilience and Renewal in Matera, at Casa Cava, from March 21 to 27, 2026.

Carmela Loiacono – During the inauguration, it was a true honor to meet you and experience your presence firsthand. Your diptych “Threshold of the Unseen” shows, in the first panel (Held), a blurred figure gently holding a feather, a symbol of fragility and memory, and in the second panel (Passed), the figure moves toward a luminous threshold. Do you see these moments as an arrival, a departure, or something that exists in between?
How do you capture, in your photographic process, the tension between presence and transition, between stillness and movement, and between fragility and the opening toward new horizons?
Bassem H. Boustany – I don’t see these two moments as a clear arrival or departure. For me, they exist in between, in that brief instant where something is about to shift but has not yet resolved.
The first image, Held, is more introspective, almost suspended. The second, Passed, suggests movement, but without certainty. It is not clear whether the figure is entering or leaving. That ambiguity is important to me.
In my process, I use movement intentionally to reduce clarity. By doing so, the image moves away from description and becomes more open. The subject is no longer fixed, it becomes a presence rather than a figure.
This is where the tension appears. Not between opposites, but within the same moment. Stillness carries movement, and fragility carries a form of strength. I try not to resolve that tension, only to remain close to it.

Carmela Loiacono – Furthermore, “The Invention of Memory” evokes memory not as recollection, but as a creative construction. When photographing, how do you distinguish between what is “remembered” and what is emerging, imagined, or invented in that very moment?
Bassem H. Boustany – For me, memory is not something we retrieve, it is something we reconstruct.
When I photograph, I am not documenting a moment as it is. The use of movement and blur transforms what I see into something that already feels distant, almost like a memory forming in real time.
So I don’t really distinguish between what is remembered and what is imagined. The image exists somewhere in between. It is both a trace of something real and a projection of something internal. What interests me is precisely that instability, when the image is not fully defined and remains open to interpretation.

Carmela Loiacono – You wrote a beautiful reflection on the exhibition on your website, which I particularly appreciated. How does it feel to see your images engage with the architecture, light, and atmosphere of Matera, a city you could personally explore, and how has that experience influenced your sense of memory, presence, and awareness?
Bassem H. Boustany – Being in Matera was a very particular experience. It is a place where time feels layered rather than sequential. You don’t feel that the past is behind you. It is still present, embedded in the stone, in the spaces, and in the way the city unfolds.
Seeing my work in that environment felt natural. The ideas of transition and threshold were already part of the city itself. The architecture, the light, and even the silence carry that same sense of continuity and transformation.
It made me realize that the work was not only placed in Matera, but in some way aligned with it. The images did not need to adapt, they were already in dialogue with the space.

Carmela Loiacono – Reflecting on your work “Street Chronicles: Taipei Through the Viewfinder”, in which you explored fleeting moments of urban life and the poetry of the everyday, how do you see this approach evolving in your future projects?
Are there new themes, spaces, or ways of capturing memory and transition that you are beginning to explore?
Bassem H. Boustany – This project started in 2017, during a period when I was spending time in Taipei for work. It was a moment of observation, where I was capturing fragments of the city and its daily life.
I cannot say that today I have a fixed style. I am still exploring different approaches, whether urban photography, movement-based work, or black and white landscapes.
Black and white, for me, is not a nostalgic choice. It is a way to simplify and to focus on structure, light, and contrast. It removes distraction and allows the image to speak in a more direct and essential way. It is also closely related to my background as an architect, where form, rhythm, and composition are fundamental.
I try not to limit myself to a specific theme or style. I prefer to let the lens respond freely to what is in front of me, capturing moments as they come, without forcing a predefined intention. What connects the work is not a subject, but a way of seeing.
At the same time, I continue to develop my fine art approach. For me, art is not about conveying information, but about formation. It is a continuous process of learning, refining, and questioning. Every day brings new influences and new ways of seeing.
With my book Vibrant Urbanism in Riyadh, I explored the city through movement and abstraction, using techniques such as intentional camera movement and multiple exposures. The intention was not to document the city, but to express its energy, its rhythm, and the emotions felt within it.
Currently, I am working on a new project titled DRIFT, which continues this exploration. The work moves further away from representation and closer to sensation, where the image becomes less about place and more about perception.
In that sense, the themes I am beginning to explore are less tied to specific locations and more to states of transition, where the image exists between clarity and disappearance, between presence and absence. I am also interested in spaces that are not necessarily defined physically, but felt emotionally, where memory is not fixed, but continuously shifting.
I am no longer trying to capture a moment. I am trying to remain within it, at the point where it begins to dissolve.