Beatrice Alegiani was born in Rome on 28 December 1972.
After leaving high school where she focused on science and maths, she enrolled in the Architecture Department of the Sapienza University, where she graduated with magna cum laude.
Since 2005 she has dedicated herself to painting by assisting and studying with different artists in Italy and abroad.
Her fascination with dolls inspired her most recent works, in which the protagonist is a Kokeshi doll, a particular model originally from Japan, to which the artist dedicated an intense production, reinventing it in a modern painterly form.
“Kokeshi Dolls” is the name of a series of works inspired by these minimal dolls that have a sphere for a head and a cylinder for a body, and otherwise no limbs.
A souvenir above all, these dolls have become collectors’ items and are also well known in the West.
Beatrice, drawn to everything related to eastern culture, with which she has developed a deep connection over the years through studies and trips, is interested in particular in the Kawaii aesthetic. This Japanese term alludes to the graceful and tender aspects of childhood as well as its potential malicious and very vulnerable aspects.
The artist animates her Kokeshi Dolls by making them look like friends and acquaintances or people worthy of admiration, like in the case of Magritte, whom we recognize from his peculiar characteristics: the bowler hat and the pipe.
By using a practice of “personalization”, the doll shifts from being an inanimate object to being a recipient of identity, an instrument of subjective differentiation.
The message held in these disproportionate bodies, where beauty is not an immediate attribute but one to discover, is that of finding an identity.
This corresponds to an actual social dimension: in the dispersive atmospheres of large urban agglomerations, where everything can remain flat and anonymous it can be hard in the end to find oneself, let alone discover oneself.
It is no coincidence that the dolls on canvas are placed on completely white backgrounds, recalling this de-contextualization. There is a sense of suspension that highlights an investigation, where in the end, even through repetition, what counts is finding your own voice, affirming your own ideas, risking being yourself, simply.
“Who are you really today?” but also and above all: “What do you do to make yourself happy?”.
Vis-à-vis oggi presenta una giovane artista romana, trovata con grande piacere curiosando tra le nuove proposte del Premio Celeste, Beatrice Alegiani.
E poi, senza sguardo assassino, arrivano le “Kokeshi Dolls” di Beatrice Alegiani. Un effetto quasi surreale che potrebbe essere riletto in chiave pop.