Vanessa Safavi

Ice Cream Light consists of over 50 neon rectangles depicting as many ice cream cones. Different, yet similar to each other, they were modelled on the illuminated signs of ice cream parlours. Vanessa Safavi used them as catalysts for some positive stereotypes linked to the image of Italy and its flair as a land of good food, good 

taste and pleasure.  

The artist explained how important it is for her to belong to a culture such as Switzerland, which includes three languages and thus puts her in touch, from her point of view, with an inherently multiple identity. Her research into population movements, tourism and the notion of exoticism led her to travel extensively, especially to Africa, and to address issues of otherness and alienation. 

In 2011, Vanessa Safavi (Lausanne, Switzerland, 1980) won the Illy Present Future Prize with her installation Real Life is Elsewhere, later exhibited at the Castle of Rivoli, in which, with the use of sand, she evoked the boundless spaces of the desert. The following year saw her first installations with small, coloured taxidermied birds, the result of her reflections on transience, while more recent are the silicone works such as Alien Armpit (2022) or those in which she addresses issues of gender identity such as Various Diaries of Women’s Empowerment (2021). Her most recent works, for which she employs a variety of different materials, are often characterised by her choice of pastel colours and scratchy titles, such as Ecstasy Entropy (Prozac) or Housewife on Drugs (Lexo), both from 2021. Between 2021 and 2022, she won a residency at the Swiss Institute in Rome. 

Vanessa Safavi's recent exhibitions include her solo show at the Fabienne Levy Gallery, Lausanne (2023).  

Silvia Maria Sara Cammarata