Portrait by Maciek Pozoga for Vogue Italia
Arianna Vairo draws, images are her primary language: exploratory, symbolic, experimental, constantly in search, and closely linked to life.
After a painting course at the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts, she trained as illustrator and engraver between the European Design Institute and the 74/B printing house, in Milan.
Since 2007, she has faced a wide variety of editorial challenges, receiving numerous awards and exhibiting her work in various exhibitions in Italy and abroad.
She loves to immerse herself into words, to emerge from the magical world of images.
She illustrated around twenty books for children and adults, and in 2017 represented Italian illustration at the Teheran Book Fair. In 2023, “Jole”, her latest illustrated adventure, won the Andersen Prize for the best book for children aged 6/9.
In 2013, she collaborated with Marina Abramović on an animation of one of her performances, which is now part of the documentary on the history of the Kaldor Public Art Projects.
From 2013 to 2021, she collaborated regularly with the New York Times and several other newspapers in Italy and abroad. Synthesis is for her one of most interesting and important aspect of visual communication, to give shape to essence is her mission and passion.
In 2015, she created a 70-meter mural, a permanent work, at Milan’s Bocconi University. The immersive essence of the image that inhabits the environment, transforming it, is exciting and revealing for her.
In 2020, she painted live the “Lessons on gesture”, taughted by Virgilio Sieni at Feltrinelli Foundation; a selection of her drawings are published in the “Dizionario minimo del gesto”. From this artistic encounter, she develops a practice of action-painting, aimed at pictorially capturing the energy that constitutes and animates the human body and the body of the world.
In 2021, her personal researches are published in the pages of Poesia, Crocetti Editore.
In 2022, she exhibits three personal pictorial researches at the Nuages gallery: “Il risveglio del carnevale e altre forme della festa...”.
In 2023, she exhibits “Il Cielo nel Lago”, her most recent pictorial research, at Il Brunitoio, Ghiffa (VB).
EDUCATION
2004 1 year course Painting, Academy of Fine Arts, Bologna
2007 BA in Illustration, Istituto Europeo di Design, Milano
2008/14 internship in printmaking with Moreno Chiodini, Stamperia 74/b, Milano
OPERE PERMANENTI
2015 - dipinto murale presso Università Bocconi, Milano
PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS
2023 Il Cielo nel Lago, Il Brunitoio, cura: Ubaldo Rodari, Ghiffa (VB) IT
2022 Il risveglio del carnevale, Galleria Nuages, cura: Cristina Taverna, Milano, IT
2018 Me & You & Everyone We Know, Careof, Milano, IT
2016 Strati e strade, la casetta dell’artista, cura: Giulia Sollai, Bologna, IT
Trame Italiane, Wait and See, cura: Alice Schillaci, Milano, IT
Arianna Vairo, Studio Ratatà, Macerata, IT
2014 S/T, Ram Hotel, cura: Paolo Parisi, Bologna, IT
2013 Confabulazioni, Spazio Meme, cura: Francesca Pergreffi, Carpi, IT
Arianna Vairo all’Utopia, Libreria Utopia, Milano IT
2010 Comer, FragileContinuo, Bologna, IT
Il Posto, cura: Marta Papini, Bologna, IT
TWO PERSON EXHIBITION
2020 Libera è..., Fabbrica del Vapore, Milano, IT
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2021 Premio Arti Visive Morlotti-Imbersago, Municipio, Imbersago, IT
2019 Empatie/Contaminazioni, cura: Sara Bodini, Patrizia Foglia, Renato Galbusera, Diego Galizzi, Ivan Pengo
2015 Incisione Italiana Under 36, L’Arte e il Torchio, Cremona, IT
2014 Segni Moderni, Galleria Casa Dugnani, Milano, IT