Artist Daniela Vignoli
Congratulations to artist Daniela Vignoli for earning her place as a Finalist in the 4th Edition of the Boynes Emerging Artist Award!
Who Are you?
I am a carioca from Rio de Janeiro. I love my country because despite all the social and political problems it has the happiest people in the world. The fact that I lived for 6 years in Switzerland in my early teens and traveled a lot during this period, gave me a feeling of belonging to the world. I love the language of the smile and I can communicate with it anywhere. I worked for almost 20 years as a casting producer where people and their diversity were my work material. Searching, looking, interpreting, stripping them is my talent. I'm a curious person, I like to move between ambiguous environments and people and dive into worlds different from mine. I'm always moving, mostly towards my inner self. The quest for self-knowledge is my biggest job in the last 50 years. I try to be a little better each day than the day before. This is my goal.
Married and mother of 2 boys, besides working with art, I founded some social projects in the neighborhood where I live and where the largest favela in Latin America is located.
For me, great victories are achieved with every micro-step. I value everything and everyone in the same way, with the same weight.
“Blooming” (Winning Work)
By Daniela Vignoli
Embroidered Photography on Canvas
“Blooming is part of my project – Overlapping Realities”
What inspired you to begin working in photography?
Real life. Real people! Authenticity! I am impressed with so many differences in the world and how people live and overcome their difficulties in different ways. Photographing is talking about what I feel through images, showing the world I see.
“Joy Joy”
By Daniela Vignoli
Embroidered Photography on Canvas
Can you explain why you choose photography as a medium for your work and voice as opposed to others [ such as painting or sculpture?
First, because I don't know how to paint or make sculptures. Even my handwriting is ridiculous!!
In photography, there is the other, the outside. A constant stimulus to your own feelings, emotions arise with what you identify with. To photograph is to keep a special moment forever, it is to carry with you the places you went through, the amazing people you met or didn't know but there were energetic exchanges. It is fragmenting, taking the small essence from the whole. It's choosing from everything the piece that interests you, because we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. Pictures can speak a lot more than words. Images convey messages to everyone in their own way. That's why I started taking pictures.
“Belquior”
By Daniela Vignoli
Embroidered Photography on Canvas
Can you discuss the inspiration behind “Blooming”?
I like photographing people, undressing them, trying to show what they have inside beyond their appearance, beyond the image. My photographic work is like a listening device in the form of an image. At the beginning of the pandemic, I took the opportunity to do training that I always wanted but never found time for. Sacred fire, energetic alignment, which are all about healing through energy, and I started to apply this new knowledge in my work with embroidery. I started to intend to transform the lives of those people through embroidery. Blooming is my desire to bring that girl more color, more delicacy, more hope. After embroidery, she no longer carries camel dung, she carries dreams in her head, the result of her struggle and all her effort.
“Sprouting-Me”
By Daniela Vignoli
Embroidered Photography on Canvas
Can you walk us through your technique of embroidery on "Blooming"?
I don't worry too much about the technique, because I can never compare myself to so many spectacular embroiderers out there. I learned some stitches with tutorials on the internet and when embroidering I apply all the energy I want to send in the form of embroidered images. The fact that embroidery is a very time-consuming manual work and that I spend days in contact with that photograph, that person, creates intimacy for me, as if I were sewing dreams, slowly, stitch by stitch, just like in life. It is empowering and valuing human beings, bringing hope.
“Resistance”
By Daniela Vignoli
Embroidered Photography on Canvas
What inspired you to explore such techniques for your work?
As coordinator of several social projects in Favela da Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, I experienced terrifying moments with the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic. People were out of work and starving! I had a lot of work collecting donations and directing them to the needy. I wanted to do more and more, and energetically intending transformations was the way I found to go beyond, without having to leave the house. Embroidery appeared!
“Hand”
By Daniela Vignoli
Embroidered Photography on Canvas
What projects are you working on currently? Can you discuss them?
I'm thinking of embroidering works by photographers who live in the favela, organizing an event with sales reverted to food, and promoting the work of talented but unknown photographers.
“Sorvete”
By Daniela Vignoli
Embroidered Photography
Lastly, I would like to ask what advice you would give to your fellow artists/photographers
The advice I want to give is to be you! The more true and authentic your work, the more it will speak to the hearts of others. Do something for those around you. The biggest beneficiary is you!
To view more of Daniela Vignoli’s work