Tatiana Cardellicchio - Gilded Dissolution 1/1

Gilded Dissolution is a unique tactile photographic work, in which the body appears suspended between presence and disappearance. The black-and-white figure emerges from a field of light like a fragmented and unstable presence. The gold applied by hand traverses the body and extends beyond its contours, transforming the photograph into a physical object, suspended between image and matter. Here gold does not act merely as ornament: it appears as a force of transformation, something that rises from darkness and progressively begins to take its place.

The work rests on a double idea of “negative.” On one hand it evokes the photographic negative, the hidden matrix from which the image takes shape. On the other it alludes to the negative in a metaphorical sense: shadow, vulnerability, fracture, emotional residue. In this work gold emerges precisely from that space. It surfaces from darkness, suggesting that what is wounded, latent, or invisible might become the origin of a new form of presence.

The body is not presented here as stable or complete, but as a trace in transformation: an image that dissolves, recomposes, and resists a definitive definition. The surrounding white emptiness amplifies this suspended condition, while the irregular golden fragments suggest a passage from shadow to revelation, from absence to material visibility.

Gilding and the protective finish were applied by hand. Subtle variations in texture and luster remain visible on the surface, making perceptible the physical process by which the photograph was transformed. Each fragment, irregular edge, and material variation is unique and cannot be mechanically reproduced.

Gilded Dissolution exists as a genuine 1/1 artwork, where photography, gesture, and matter converge in a single image of transformation.

The work continues Tatiana Cardellicchio’s broader exploration of identity, visibility, and the aesthetic structures imposed on the body. Beauty here does not appear as a harmonious surface, but as an active force, capable of modifying, concealing, and destabilizing the subject.

*Gilded Dissolution* exists as an authentic 1/1 artwork, suspended between photography, gesture, and matter.

**Unique mixed-media photographic work, 1/1. Photographic print with hand-applied gilding and hand-applied water-based protective finish. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 1/1 on the reverse. Unframed.**

Biography:

Born in Lecce, Tatiana Cardellicchio is a visual artist and photographer whose gaze draws on the light of the South, transformed into poetic matter. Her work unfolds as a silent dialogue between body, identity, and nature, in a visual research that is at once intimate and universal. A graduate in Photography from the Italian Institute of Photography, she builds suspended narratives between aesthetics and awareness, questioning contemporary identity through images that require slowness, listening, and attention.

In 2024 she received the Silver Medal at the Prix de la Photographie Paris in the Portrait/Self-Portrait category for the project Impact, a personal reflection on the bond between body and the Salento landscape. Her works have been exhibited in international contexts (Imagenation Paris, London, New York), festivals (Paratissima), galleries and museums (National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, Medina Roma), outlining a coherent and recognizable poetics that moves between self-representation, emotional ecology, and identity aesthetics.

Her works have been exhibited in various exhibitions and volumes:

2026

101 ArtBook: Photography Edition, Arts to Hearts Project; Featured Interview

Floral Artists of the Year 2025, publication by Artist of the Year Award

IPFA Award 2025
Awarded Solo Exhibition – Brazil 2026

Christos Kapralos Museum, Greece

2025

Honorable mention in Art photography Best Photo Awards 2024-2025

Imagenation London (May 2025)

Endless Spring (photographic show curated by Paratissima) Torino

I Am- I am, Female Photography, National Etruscan Museum Villa Giulia (Rome)

Impact (solo show) LAB ex macello (Taranto)

2024

"Naked-part of us" Rome 2024

Silver Prize at the Prix de la Photographie Paris in the Portrait/Self-portrait category 2024

"Nuovi corpi" Silent Dialogues between body and nature (Rome) September 2024

BESTSELECTED Vol. 7 in the SERIES WINNERS category, 2024

Imagination NewYork (One Art Space gallery) Tribeca, Manhattan, New York, March 2024

Selvino Art Fest, Selvino (BR) 2024

"Universe 2024, inner chaos" Magazzini musa, 2024 (AN)

2023

Imagenation Paris, Free Bodies, Galerie Joseph Le Palais, PARIS May 2023

Personal exhibition: "IMPACT" solo show during the Porto Cesareo Film Festival, telling the link between body and Salento territory around the coastal towers that border the Porto Cesareo nature reserve.

2022

Imagenation Milan, New Eyes, Fondazione Luciana Matalon MILAN September 2022

Collateral Maris, Cose dell'altro mondo, June 2022

Nature in Shadows, Ombra magazine, finalist Photography contest, 2022

BESTSELECTED, Selected in Best Selected, Volume V, 2022

other:

2019

Design-Re. Italian Institute of Photography. April 12, 2019 – “Design-RE” The faces of national design on the occasion of Milano Design Week 2019 at the WALL of the Italian Institute of Photography.

EPOCA
After 2000