She lives and works in Rome.
Her oeuvre, encompassing large-scale oil paintings, videos, and painted interventions on photography, is characterized by a fluid interplay of diverse artistic languages. Operating at the intersection of painting and the mechanical recording of reality, her work creates a constellation of pieces that engage in a continuous dialogue, layering memory and vision in a persistent journey à rebours into her personal experiences.
Laura Federici’s, body of work debates the reality of urban lives and the relations which connect us to the environment showing how space affects our memories, creating a new language of forms and colors. Federici’s blissful canvases draw the viewer in whether they depict the elevated highway running through Rome or the courtyards of the mosques in Damascus, effectively gripping our minds. Objects shown in detail or close-ups become anchors to hold on to, lest we get caught in contemporary ‘mobility’ and fall ill with disorientation. They are rafts to get on to, when the fluidity of things makes us all strangers, with no space to occupy.” – (from the article by art critic Arianna di Genova). Suddenly we are transformed and immersed in sunny seasides, the eternal beauty of Rome or exotic landscapes.
She has held numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Serra espositiva dell’Orto Botanico di Roma in 2023, Galleria l’Affiche in Milan (2008, 2011, 2023), Gallerie Brieve in Paris (2014), and Galleria André in Rome (2002, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022). Her work has also been showcased at the Fine Arts Museum in Ho Chi Minh City (2018), Galleria Il Segno in Rome (2007), and Galleria Beit Ahmad in Aleppo, Syria (2003, 2005).
Federici has participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Italy and internationally, including the FOTOGRAFIA International Festival of Rome – XV Edition at MACRO Museum in 2016, “Rome, the World.” Her work has been featured at Casa Italia Hanoi under the Italian Embassy in Vietnam in 2018, and at Italian Cultural Institutes in Warsaw (2019), Krakow (2020), and Belgrade (2022). Additionally, she exhibited in ARTFEM Women Artists 2 – International Biennial of Macau: Natura in 2021. Her contributions extend to urban art intervention projects organized by the Capitoline Administration, such as Street Art in Biblioteca at the Renato Nicolini Library in Corviale in 2014, part of the “Notte delle Biblioteche” and Outside/Inside/Out: Arte in Regina Coeli in 2016, following an artistic workshop with inmates at Rome’s Regina Coeli Prison. In 2017, she also participated in the Karachi Art Biennale.
Her video work, often a central element of her artistic practice, includes 12 animated sequences for Gianluca Tavarelli’s film Un Amore (1999), which won the N.I.C.E. Film Festival in New York. Currently, Federici also teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Frosinone.
“My work is about time. A work about the repetition of the moment, about the creation of a new history.
It is not a picture that I paint. It is a frame, a lightning of time” — Laura Federici