MERY TORTOLINI

Artist, living and working in Rome, after studying law and journalism, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts with a thesis in aesthetics. Since 1999 she has collaborated with the La Sapienza University of Rome conducting, at the invitation of Tullio De Mauro and Alberto Asor Rosa, experimental work on the relationship between image and writing, together with the linguist writer and screenwriter Annio Gioacchino Stasi.

The artist’s work reflects on the processes of language formation, both through an original artistic practice and through an innovative methodology on the relationship between images and writing.

Her pictorial and design research is accompanied by a specific methodology and artistic-linguistic experimentation, documented, with narrative style, in the volume “The Laboratory of Image and Writing. Practice and Theory. A research on representative thought” (Ibiskos Editrice Risolo, Empoli, December 2007). This research opens, in this regard, new horizons of study on the capacity for thought in human representative expression.

She is one of the creators of a performs in the documentary film “Ombre di luce”. The feature film, released in theatres in 2011, focuses on the artistic-linguistic research and teaching activities of the Image and Creative Writing Laboratory. The film was presented, amongs others, at the Levanto International Film Festival in August 2011 and was a candidate in the selection for the Silver Ribbons. Mery Tortolini and Annio G. Stasi received, in 2011, from the Presidency of the Republic, a letter of merit in recognition for their artistic, educational and research work.

She has organized and participated in various exhibitions, meetings and conferences for cultural institutes and universities. The mains ones include: the personal exhibition and the conference: “Linguistic architectures – between images and words”, at the “Mazzullo Foundation” of Taormina with the collaboration of the University of Messina (2004);

the personal exhibition and conference at the ICTP in Trieste, “SCIENCE AND ART = thinking about the present” (2006); the personal exhibition at the Marconi Library in Rome, “The city of time” (2007); the personal exhibition and conference at the La Sapienza University of Rome “Imagination is method,” (2009).

Among the group exhibitions in which she has participated, notable was in 2015, for the project “Art” “Open Testaccio. Contemporary Agora “. In 2013 she held in Tuscania (VT), on the occasion of the inauguration of her art and research studio “La Linea” and the presentation of the second volume: “Imagination and method in the human sciences. Didactics and training ”, the personal exhibition:“ The line and the face ”, curated by Claudio Zambianchi, accompanied by a conference. She has illustrated, through images, various literary texts and created covers for publishing houses and magazines.

She has held training courses and conferences for the “La Sapienza” University and the Libraries of Rome. She has collaborated with the Ministries of Education, University and Research, Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Interior, carrying out training courses on the relationship between image and writing and on issues related to image and identity, with attention to cultural diversity and the issue of minorities. For the Libraries of the Municipality of Rome she has held various training workshops and organized and edited the project “The conquest of the present” in which, among others, participated Giancarlo De Cataldo and Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Claudio Zambianchi.