Mediagallery:

2023

by Valentina Formisano

face/NOFACE^® is a project of pop illustration by Valentina Formisano.
Iconic faces from entertainment, politics, art, music, and popular culture in general are the subjects of these works. The portraits are created by assembling elements from the biography of each individual character to form their face: nothing is what it seems; in fact, when approaching the works, one enters a microcosm of episodes, anecdotes, and symbols (often ironic or sharply satirical) that are the very essence of the character.

These are drawn biographies in which the visual narrative has a non-linear but spiral-like reading, where upon a second glance, a new element appears. Optical illusions created in the style of Arcimboldo from the 1500s, but with a more narrative and graphic approach. The drawings are solely done by hand with ballpoint pen and marker on paper.

Valentina Formisano, aka face/NOFACE^®, was born in Naples in 1987. She moved to Macerata in 1998. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and won numerous awards such as the Brera Art Prize for Graphic Design in 2011. She has been a scholar at the Fundaciòn CIEC in La Coruña and at the Il Bisonte Foundation in Florence.

In 2019, she moved to Rome where she currently lives and works as an artist and teacher.