Ophelia (art) - digital painting of a doll by Barbara Agreste

Barbara Agreste

Artist, Photographer, Filmmaker

Barbara Agreste music

Music by Barbara Agreste

Music is happiness to me. When I listen to it, whatever genre I happen to come across with, I always become more cheerful. Sounds make me feel better, even when the sort of tunes I am hearing are sad, melancholic, or hard to listen to like hard, industrial rock, or heavy, trash metal. I’ve always thought that melody,

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Leftovers, Ropes.

Leftovers, Ropes.
One minute trailer.

This is the last video I made, after this I have been unable to produce more videos and films, for a long time. This film is about a red sea, the water in this film is of a deep intense red, and it represents a great catastrophe which has taken place, and is still taking place at sea, in the Mediterranean. When I shot this film, I wasn’t aware of what was about to happen in the future: but as usual, Continue reading

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, this is a portrait of the great poet Virginia Woolf by Barbara Agreste.

 

Virginia Woolf

Drawing Series, Woman’s face 3,
pastels and acrylics on acid-free paper
by Barbara Agreste.

Virginia Woolf and her story.

I will never understand Virginia Woolf‘s story, I mean the way it ended. As with Ophelia, the fictional character from Shakespeare, I will analyse Virginia Woolf’s suicide this time. Why am I interested in it? Because it is something I fail to understand completely, and surely to imagine how such an act of removing oneself’s life is possible, I would have to dig deeply into the reasons beyond it.

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Reptilica


Reptilica

Reptilica is partly animation and partly a film where real people perform. It Starts with a doll which is animated with the stop motion technique, she is searching through the many dry leaves that rest on the floor, something she has seen or felt passing by, but she can’t seem to find it.

Other scenes in the movie introduce small pink worms falling on a group of ivy leaves, these are the disturbing presence that bother the doll as they sneak under the leaves, never letting themselves to be seen.

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Cyanide

Cyanide: running towards the void

My film Cyanide has had a peculiar beginning. It originated from a period of my life of extreme depression, and uncertainty, and it was an action I was performing every day that made me think about developing the more predominant images of this film.

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The Checkered Tunnel


The Checkered Tunnel

The Checkered Tunnel is a animation made entirely with 3D software. This short movie represents a fragmented space made of a checkered tunnel where the squares that fill its walls, floor, and ceiling alternate from red to white (the colour red is a metaphor for trauma).

At the opening of the piece the point of view of the spectator (the camera) is turning on itself in a chequered room with a missing wall leading to a black void.

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16 mm

 16 mm by Barbara Agreste

I remember I was in the laboratory, it was a bright day of March or April, maybe May, the weather was warm, and I was with my friend Alex working on those very large tables in a wonderful printing facility room in KIAD college of Art. I was unrolling a long 16mm transparent film strip, and close by on the table I had collected and placed down carefully so many petals, Continue reading

The Tower Trilogy


The Tower Trilogy

 The Tower Trilogy has three titles that originated in Italian: “La Torre, Le Formiche, Lo Specchio” and they translate this way in english : “The Tower, The Insects, The Mirror”. This animation is made with 16 mm film, and DV video, and it is very abstract although some figures appear on the screen at some points.

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Rain

Rain Synopsis:

In this video the Rain is made out of blood: a constant red rain falls on the vegetation of the town.
Here the concept of violence is not expressed literally with scenes of cruelty, but it is symbolically represented by the never ending rain that exists through the all duration of the film. This video does not present a resolution to this sad scenario, there are only few moments in which the rain stops, and leaves violently shaken by the wind moving in slow motion inhabit the screen.

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Pictures Book

My idea to put old photographs from 1919 into a Pictures Book

The animation “Pictures Book” was commissioned by Curator Enrico Tomaselli to be part of the “100×100=900 Video Art Project, One Hundred Artists to tell a century” which is presenting one hundred videos each inspired to one year of the 20th century.

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Ruby Red Hair

Ruby Red Hair Tao and Playing Cards - Pop Surrealism Series Drawing of a woman with Red Hair, printed on her dress are the images of playing cards, a heart, the Tao Symbol, and Snakes.

Ruby Red Hair, Tao,
and Playing Cards.

Ruby Red Hair: Drawing Series – pastels on acid free paper.

This is a drawing of a woman with Ruby Red Hair, or vivid dark red hair: she is the icon of wild nature when the human meets with the darkest and most enigmatic side of the earth. The carmine, vivid crimson colour of her hair represents a particular moment in time when her  menstrual cycle is in the bleeding phase. This phase is very strange: the hair of the woman hasn’t always been red, but when the bleeding time comes, her hair turns suddenly carmine,

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Dolls - Ophelia (art, paintings) series by Barbara Agreste