Isabella Saraceni
Livable Futures
Art, The Ohio State University
Biography
As an interdisciplinary artist, my work engages with how confronting our mortality can deepen our relationships with the living, the dead, and the precariousness of the everyday. I explore what death—one of the few universal truths—can reveal about being alive and how we can embody and express that understanding. Using multiple mediums such as photography, collage, painting and sculpture, I create material relationships and associations for personal grief and love, decay and regeneration, detachment and longing. Through these works, I touch on the many ways we try to maintain connections through the wordlessness of loss. This understanding is strengthened by my practice in becoming an end-of-life doula—providing support and guidance for the dying and their loved ones. My studio work and doula practice guide me to move through my life in collaboration with my active dying.
Q & A
What makes more livable futures for you?
I think more livable futures start with recognizing our humanness— we are all deeply flawed, wonderful and complicated, that we are all carrying immense pain and loss, and have the capacity for change. From my research on death and grief, I understand this recognition to come from building more empathy for others rather than sympathy. Death is a fact of life, and I believe keeping it present as a reminder of our mortality can create meaningful change for the individual rippling into the collective of the human and the more-than-human.
What are you reading, viewing, listening to right now?
One of my latest daily reads is The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig— it is a dictionary that creates new words collaged together from different languages to define emotions that we all experience but struggle to find language for. I try to flip randomly to a new one each day. A recent favorite is Suerza: n. A feeling of quiet amazement that you exist at all (Spanish: suerte, Luck + fuerza, Force).
A special treat read lately has been Maira Kalman’s book Principles of Uncertainty— it is an illustrated documentary/chapbook of her daily life— it’s funny, often heartbreaking and helps me see the everyday, sometimes mundane moments of life with more color.
I listen to a lot of podcasts especially while in the studio working, some favorites are DeadTalks, Ologies, On Being, Talk Easy, and The Moth. My recent favorite episodes have been the On Being episode with adrienne mare brown On Radical Imagination and Moving Towards Life, and the Ologies episode on Scotohyology (Dark Matter) with Flip Toledo. I also listen to David Foster Wallace’s speech This is Water on a weekly basis.
What practices are sustaining you?
Recently, as I am in the midst of preparing my thesis exhibition for my MFA I have fallen out of a few of my sustaining practices, though the one I always make time for is going for daily walks. No matter how long or short, walking always helps me reconnect. Another practice that sustains me and one that I want to continue to improve on is consistently reaching out to people when something reminds me of them or just when they cross my mind. Just a text to let someone know they are being thought of feels rare sometimes and it goes a long way. Life is precarious, I want people to know I love them.