Borgo Museo | Nuove Opere 2019 – 2021
* La Residenza d’Artista 2019 (prima edizione) è un progetto a cura di CCT-SeeCity per la Pro Loco di Castagno, realizzato con il contributo della Fondazione Caript nell’ambito del bando Sviluppo e Cultura 2019 e patrocinato dal Comune di Pistoia. Clicca qui per vedere foto e video.
Biography
Bianca Tschaikner, born in 1985, is an Austrian illustrator and storyteller but also a ceramist, poet and many other things. He studied Media Design at the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences in Austria and Chile, Engraving at the International School of Graphic Arts in Florence and at the International Center for Contemporary Printing (Fundacion CIEC) in Spain, in Betanzos and has a Masters in illustration of children’s books at the University of Fine Arts of Macerata. She has been invited as a residency artist at art institutions in several countries, not only in Italy but also in Iran, India, Jordan, Spain, Portugal and Pakistan. Among her favorite countries, which most inspire her art, are India, Iran and the whole Mediterranean area. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world and her illustrations have appeared in newspapers, international books and magazines, such as VICE magazine, HuffPost, Harper’s Bazaar India and The Guardian. You have published several books, the latest include: Meghalaya, Lake City and Minisutra. She is also a yoga teacher.
Philosophy
Bianca draws inspiration for her works of art and publications, around the world, from travels and from the different cultures and people she met, in search of the essence of places, of an interesting perspective, with a story to tell. He works mainly in small format with an experimental and spontaneous approach, using a wide range of different techniques to create fantastic, sometimes surreal, sometimes comic worlds, inspired by internal and external images, which emerge from the dark place of the mind where fantasy and reality they meet and mingle. Among the fairy-tale characters that she most loves to represent, as always, since she was a child and still today, there are certainly mermaids. Being a traveling artist, she is interested in everything that is unknown and new: “I love history, culture, languages, archeology, astronomy, travel … I love everything that makes us discover and understand that we are all part of one great connection”.
Artwork in Castagno
With her work in Castagno Bianca she tried to capture the joy of life and that is exactly what she transmits to us by looking at it: a mural painting of two girls who live in Castagno, Greta and Emma, with their hula hoop and Whiskey, the black cat (a conscious or not citation to the black cat by Giuseppe Gavazzi that we find in the village, “almost” part of the sculptural complex Maternità e il gattino in the little square). How did the idea come about? Bianca says: “One day we were having lunch in Benedetta’s garden (an inhabitant of Chestnut), when suddenly I heard a strange sound, it seemed like a very strange little bird. What is this? I asked curiously. Oh, this is just Greta-answered Giulio Benedetta’s husband and laughed – Greta and her trumpet. You may have seen her, she is the little girl with the hula hoop. And – she added – she can also do the hula hoop and play the trumpet at the same time! An image popped up in my head and I knew I had found my theme for the wall painting. And so I went out, got my drawing stuff and went to meet Greta. Greta’s mother invited me to do the painting of her on her house facade, which was perfect. And I was happy to have found – among all the stories of castles, bombings and trains – such a happy and lively image of the future for this dream town that has lived in the past for so long”.
Curiosity: always inspired by the inhabitants of Castagno and their stories, the artist has also created a book with ink drawings, his first project for the 2019 Residence. 13x21cm, with illustrated poems, miniatures of texts and memories of the residents, such as war stories and more, a map of the country and some portraits of present and past inhabitants. The stories Bianca collected here are stories from the past, often nostalgic or dramatic memories. The mural instead that she created for the Borgo Museo is deliberately a message of present life, joy and future.