PRESENTATION: Viviane Sassen-This Body Made of Stardust

Viviane Sassen’s oeuvre explores both the depths of human emotion and the boundaries of artistic expression. Death, sexuality, desire and connection with others are all motifs that structure her work. Renowned for her adept use of saturated colors, mastery of light and shadow, and distinctive depictions of the human body, Sassen’s work is a testament to her artistic language. For Sassen, photography is a magical medium. For her, photography is like a mirror that reflects what is already inside us, and likewise a portal to another universe with infinite possibilities.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Collezione Maramotti Archive

The exhibition “This Body Made of Stardust” by Viviane Sassen comprises more than fifty photographs and a video, all dating from 2005 to 2025, with several new works made specifically for the occasion.  It is the most extensive presentation of Sassen’s work in Italy to date and is curated by the artist herself. Revolving around the concept and iconography of the memento mori, the photos on view trace branching paths through the infinite possibilities and nuances of life. It appears fertile, intense, and overflowing, but also intrinsically fragile: (abstractions of) human bodies, landscapes, dust, earth and organic matter become symbols and recurring reminders of death—an inevitable passage in the transformation of all that lives. Through a non-narrative structure built from visual fragments and formal links between images that seem very different, Sassen invites us into a many-sided, dreamlike, seductive universe distilled drop by drop from everyday life and instilled with Surrealism, flowing out of the artist’s interaction (her fantasies, obsessions, memories and fears) with the outside world. Forming a dialogue with sculptures from Collezione Maramotti (by Evgeny Antufiev, Kaarina Kaikkonen, Fabrizio Prevedello and TARWUK) to which Sassen felt an immediate affinity, the photographs in the show are drawn from different series of works in her vast archive, which the artist has been reworking into different configurations for years now, in a sort of long-term investigative project. Sassen, who has a deep connection to three-dimensional art, as well as design and fashion, also calls herself a sculptor. She shapes light – and, above all, shadow, a metaphor for the torments and desires of the human psyche; she molds bodies and objects; she forges bold, vibrant, intense colors, even  introducing paint, ink, and collage into her practice to add a new dimension to the photographic image. Her multiform works capture and hold the gaze in the gaps of their mystery, perpetually generating new ripples and levels of meaning. Through a process of layering, Sassen reveals what is hidden under the surface. Almost nothing is what it seems at first glance; in this interlacing of reality and fiction, within ambiguous compositions that seem to shift and reform every time we look at them, our perceptions are constantly called into question. We encounter a large palm frond clasped in two young people’s embrace; a proliferation of plants and fungi, clusters of cells and rhizomatic creatures; faceless bodies of flesh and stone, mutilated and disjointed, cradled by the earth or the water, wrapped up, enveloped, repeatedly posed and recomposed; tree trunks standing like stelae and graves on the thresholds of unknown realms; unwitting, shapeshifting warriors of the future. In her attempt to “grant structure to chaos,” Sassen transfigures the normal Latin term into her own memento amoris, inviting viewers to see the beauty and awe of passage. We are dust (and to dust we will return), but that dust is stardust.

Photo left: Viviane Sassen, Untitled from Roxane II, 028, 2017, c-print, 45 x 30 cm, © Viviane Sassen, Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Amsterdam). Photo right: Viviane Sassen, True Love, 2019, c-print, 60 x 50 cm, © Viviane Sassen, Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Amsterdam)

Info : Collezione Maramotti. Via Fratelli Cervi 66, Reggio Emilia, Italy, Duration: 27/4-27/7/2025, Days & Hours: Thu-Fri 14 :30-18 :30, Sat-Sun 10 :30-18 :30, www.collezionemaramotti.org/