I describe my work as the creation of atmospheres, which surround bodies, pass through them and interact with them. I am interested in creating circumstances that are situated in specific socio-cultural and psycho-physical contexts, also working with temporal and ephemeral elements. This way of working has led me to dwell in the residual spaces where institutional powers, the pervasiveness of media and neoliberal politics meet the politics of affect.
Rebecca Moccia was born in Naples in 1992. She lives and works in Milan.
In her transdisciplinary practice, Moccia explores the materiality of perceptive and emotive states that can emerge from specific social and spatial environments.
Between 2013 and 2018, with the series Un linguaggio inaudito (An Unheard-of Language), Moccia explored gender dynamics in the Italian language, investigating signs and semantic relationships.
With Courage in 2017, she expresses a “generational manifesto” (Sergio Risaliti, 2020). A work simply composed of white enamel and rain, traced on the roof of Milan, whose substantial invisibility (the work is not visible from the street but only from above) reveals the vulnerability that coexists with courage in every act of vindication.
Da qui tutto bene (2019) is a site-specific project created for the loggia of the Museo del Novecento in Florence. In the monumental complex of the former Leopoldine, originally intended for reading, meditation and silent confrontation, the artist reflects on the contradictions of our time, between that of thepromiscuity of reality and its representation. It is this critical research relating to the neoliberal regime of visibility and positivity, that we find throughout Moccia’s practice, exploring the conditions of opacity and unavailability, as well as of ambiguity, subtraction and the negative.
Between 2020 and 2022, Moccia has been artist fellow at Castro projects (Rome), artist in residency at Casa degli Artisti (Milan), and winner of “Cantica21” – promoted by Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Ministry of Culture – to produce Rest your eyes, commissioned and acquired by the collection of MAMbo (Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna).
In 2021, she received an international research grant sponsored by the Ministry of Culture’s General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity under the Italian Council programme. The project Ministry of Loneliness, was carried out in collaboration with Outset England, Jupiter Woods, Magazzino Italian Art, Italian Embassy in Tokyo, Nanzan University, and Fondazione ICA Milano, and also involved residencies in London, New York and Nagoya in 2022.
The project, an investigation into loneliness and its politicisation in contemporary society, culminated in a solo exhibition of the same name curated by Chiara Nuzzi at Fondazione ICA Milano, which was followed by a monographic publication co-published by Humboldt Books, thanks to the support of the Outset Partners Grant.
In 2022, Rebecca Moccia also won the ArteVisione Award, promoted by Careof, to support the most innovative research in the field of the moving image, and in 2023 the OGR Award, promoted by Fondazione CRT as part of Artissima fair, dedicated to artists who embrace working with new technologies. In 2024, she presented the solo show Ministries of Loneliness, 외로움의 지형학
curated by Soik Jung, Italian Pavilion, 15th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea.
Moccia’s works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and screenings at: Fondazione ICA Milano, Milan; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene; International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Oberhausen; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Jupiter Woods, London; Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Brussels; Museo Novecento, Florence; Toast Project Space Florence; The Open Box, Milan;; MACRO Testaccio, Rome; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genoa; among others.
Additionally, she has also created educational projects and workshops for numerous institutions including, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; University of Pavia; IED Istituto Europeo di Design, Rome; Manifattura Tabacchi, Florence; Nanzan University, Nagoya.Rebecca.
Moccia is one of the founding members of AWI – Art Workers Italia.