Cleo Fariselli’s practice evokes the suspended realm of the liminal and its imaginative, destabilising, transformative potential. Recurring across her work are the dynamics of looking and being looked at, the body as a measure of the world, and the figure of the metamorphic — the snake-woman, the water creature, the half-emerging form. Working across sculpture, ceramics, sound, painting and installation, she stages environments that engage all the senses, often punctuated by raku ceramics cast from her own body, painted surfaces poised between figuration and abstraction, and disembodied voices that trail through the space like distant aquatic echoes. An autobiographical undercurrent runs throughout, mediated by classical references, mythologies of metamorphosis and a sustained interest in the unheimlich.

Born into a family of musicians, she initially studied theatre before graduating from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in 2007, completing her training with workshops by Jimmie Durham (Fondazione Ratti, Como), Rirkrit Tiravanija (Domus Academy, Venice), Liliana Moro and the Otolith Group (Fondazione Spinola Banna, Turin). She has been in residence at the Dena Foundation in Paris (2009) and BAR Project in Barcelona (2013), and has been a finalist for the Museion Prize, the NMWA Women to Watch in Washington, the 5×5 Castellò Award and the Ariane De Rothschild Prize. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions have taken place at Iannaccone Collection, Clima, GAFF, Fonderia Artistica Battaglia and Lucie Fontaine in Milan, at Operativa in Rome, and at Espacio Sant Pere in Barcelona. She lives and works in Turin.