CHIARA AMBROSIO

Chiara Ambrosio is a London-based filmmaker, visual artist and curator, working with the moving image, photography, painting, sound and printed matter to explore the ways in which we perceive, remember, articulate and preserve personal and collective histories and senses of place, and how we may construct new rituals within secular societies through art.

Her work pays witness to and portrays that which struggles on the fringes of dominant narratives- communities, landscapes, stories, dreams, objects, perceptions, sensibilities - excluded and marginalised for a variety of different reasons but always fundamental to our understanding of what makes us human- "Keep looking for things in places where there is nothing" (Jonas Mekas). She thinks that the artist's role is akin to that of a medium, making visible what hovers just beyond perception- whether through painting, printmaking, film or sound, re-enchanting the world until it hums with possibility.

She is a long-term collaborator of musician Amanda Palmer, and her work includes collaborations with composers, poets and anthropologists, and has been presented extensively both nationally and internationally at venues such as The Whitechapel Gallery, Anthology Film Archives and La Cinematheque Francaise.

For the last decade she has been one of the custodians of books and their stories at Bookartbookshop, a small community artist bookstore in Shoreditch, as well as curating regular shows, events and festivals at London’s cult venue The Horse Hospital.

She produces “Raft”, a monthly radio show on London’s Resonance 104.4 fm radio station, where she embarks on walks across the city with other Londoners, reaping and sowing stories within its streets.

Chiara is the publisher of a monthly photographic zine, As Far As The Eye Can Travel.

COURSES TAUGHT

Pruning the Family Tree: Storytelling from the Bones, or Turning Biography into Art