Tanina Cuccia's Profile

From: Italy
Joined: October 28, 2007
www.taninacuccia.it

About tcuccia:

Born in 1964 and graduated in Painting at the Academy of Art in 1986, she used to live in Piana Degli Albanesi until 1989.(Italy)
Besides being a painter, since 1985 she has been an iconographer representing, in her works, the “arbëreshe”, Albanian speaking and Byzantine cultures in various cultural events.
Between 1988 and 1991 she was responsible for the project of ethnic-anthropological researches that was the basis for the creation of the Ethnographic Museum Nino Barbato of Piana Degli Albanesi.
Since 1996 she has been a teacher of Pictorial Discipline at Liceo Artistico E. Catalano in Palermo.
In the last three years her artistic production sees the fusion of the iconographic tradition (handicraft skill, technicality and chromatic refinement ) with the painting of “ research” that has always characterized her parallel pictorial production.
Her researches cover a vast range of interests going, beyond abstractionism and informal, towards a disenchanted way of “ painting “ which rejects any labelling or any “a priori” choices, being based, instead, upon discovery.
In her recent works there is a hint of representational art based on memory: They are fragmented, decomposed images linked to Byzantine iconography that represents a peculiar aspect of her cultural formation.
Very often the compositions break with the rigid rectangular framework of the picture: they are decomposed panels where the empty spaces have a highly semantic value being symbols of a condition of human “uneasiness” towards reality and history that the painter feels without never entering the chronicle.

Main exhibitions
Collettiva pittori arbëresh - Piana d Albanesi-1985
Realizzazione di un mosaico raffigurante S. Giovanni precursore- Chiesa S. Giorgio- Piana - 1985
Futuro è già - Accademia di belle arti Palermo 1986
Murales a Prizzi - Prizzi- 1986
Cielo di pietra-personale di pittura-Piana-1987
Arte bizantina- Bottega di Hefesto - Palermo-1987
Collettiva pittori arbëresh-Chieuti (Foggia)-Castelvecchio(RC), Montecilfone(CB) -1987
Collettiva pittori arbëreshe- Barile, Ginestra, Moschito (Potenza)-1987
Personale di pittura-Kipling Academy- Roma-1988
“Ritiri”.Memorie litiche-personale pittura- Piana d. Albanesi- 1988
Tradizione e invenzione - Ex Carcere- Piana d. Albanesi.- 1988
Il cavallo immaginato - collettiva- Fondazione Witaker- Palermo- 1988
Iconografia arbëreshe - Partanna- 1988
La Sicilia a Basilea - Basilea (Svizzera)-1988
T. Cuccia e S. Giamo - Cuba di villa Sperlinga- Palermo-1989
Icone e ori-Museo etno-antropologico-Piana-1992
Il Natale nel presepe artistico - Palazzo Branciforte - Palermo 1994
"Icone". personale - Centro d'arte Raffaello - Palermo - 1994
Il Natale nel presepe artistico - S. Francesco di Sales - Palermo- 1995
Icone arte e fede Mezzoiuso - chiesa di s. Nicolò di Mira- 1996-97
Simposio delle arti U.C.A.I.-Cattedrale Palermo-1997
Mostra di icone e ori S. Angelo Muxaro (AG)- 1998
Horarte - Piana d. Albanesi - 2003
Mostra dell'artigianato artistico siciliano Loggiato della chiesa di S. Francesco Assisi -2003
Horarte 2° ediz.- Museo civico N. Barbato, Piana d. Albanesi - 2004
Collettiva Pasqua 2005- Museo civico N. Barbato, Piana d. Albanesi.
Framment-azione1- Galleria L’altro Artecontemporanea, Palermo -2006
" I confini del sacro"- Tabularium del Loggiato San Bartolomeo, Palermo 2006

Annunciation: fresco, egg tempera, plastic materials, silver gilt on wood
Empyrean:, Dissection of an Angel: egg tempera, silver gilt, vinyl impasto, acrylic
Blue Virgin: egg tempera, silver gilt on wood incamottato

The icon, expression of Byzantine spirituality, develops within a crystallized sacrality based upon highly defined canons and rules. It essentially represents the search for “beautiful-good” and its task consists in bringing the viewer to the contemplation of truth.
However, in some icons there is a sort of beauty that goes beyond and, sometimes, leaves out of consideration the mere religious aspect, without getting so far as to represent the “not sacred”.
Such beauty springs from daring chromatic combinations, from signs that, out of context, take on new and rich aesthetic values, and from particular contrasts of matter.
In the last few years my research has been carried out within what we could define the borders of a sacred range.

Angelic Creature: collage, gold, vinyl impasto on wooden board

Modern Shroud: diptych-tempera on wood incamottato and vinyl impasto, plottaggio on paper stuck on board and burlap inserts.

Triptych: egg tempera, silver gilt on incamottato wood

The Archangel Michael: egg tempera on incamottato wood

A far away world peopled by warrior saints and angelic creatures is realized through a careful and meticulous pictorial work which recovers ancient techniques. The cuts and the strongly contrasted planes of matter, however, bring this world back to a reality subject to the disintegration of the matter and to its uncontrollable changes.
In this out of context process the signs lose their original meaning in order to create new pictorial ones. Therefore, my research revolves around a desecrating project, though never fully accomplished, for the simple reason that it is linked to the search for identity based both on the awareness of being part of a human history far from such concepts as incorruptibility or absolute integrity and on my great attraction for Byzantine mysticism.