Installations/Sets/Sites
Drawings /Paintings

Peacock Panoramica
Tryptich
Charcoal on drawing paper
100 x 40 inches


New York City, 2025






Untitled
Steel and iron angle stock
48 x 48 inches .


New York City, 2025




The Pink Palace
Oil on  canvas
18 x 24 inches

New York City, 2024




Anatomy of Change
Oil on Panel
50 x 34 inches .


New York City, 2025






Enter The Citadel (Pt. I, II, III)
Graphite on paper
18 x 24 inches
2024

New York City, 2024

The city! The city! The citadel! Hair loss and cosmic derailment. Step right up folks and get lost in my three part drawing exploring— exploring....? exploring.

Is the city just a clump of tangled hair that fell off the head of another cosmic trainwreck? Would you feel less alone if we talked about it? Maybe we should take up a new language and connect to beings from this realm and the next. Does anyone know the difference between milk, cream and half and half??

How else, if not conjuring ghosts, gods and tricksters, will we ever be able to talk to each other? I'm asking for a friend







Loose Ends
Graphite on paper
18 x 24 inches
2024


New York City, 2024






















Vanda Focanti
vsfocanti@gmail.com
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Vanda Focanti is a multi-disciplinary (CON) artist, writer and performer in New York City.










Mediums
Drawing
Metalwork
Oil and Acrylic Painting
Set design
Performance
Writing
Ceramics


Press Mentions & PublicationsCYBORG LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE
New York City, 2025

NEO-BABYLON (ZINE)
New York City, 2025

INSTITUT FRANCAIS
Rome, 2023

ART TRIBUNE
Rome, 2023 

CALACA MX (EDITION TITLE: INTER)
London, 2022

DAZED DIGITAL
London, 2022





Exhibitions Intimate Aftergesture
25 East Gallery
New York City, USA
2025

La Stanza dei Manifesti
contributing artist
Hercole
Milan, Italy
2024

Aperto per Lavori
contributing muralist
The French Embassy
Rome, Italy
2023

Un Lieve Circoscrivere
curatorial assistant
ETworks Studio
Rome, Italy
2023

Spaziotempo
curatorial assistant
ETworks Studio
Rome, Italy
2023

Mundos Paralelos
contributing artist and curator
The UK Mexican Arts Society
London, UK
2022

Casa X
curator
The UK Mexican Arts Society
London, UK
2022




Education
MFA Fine Arts
Parsons The New School
New York City
class of 2026

Ba (Hons) Culture, Criticism and Curation
Central Saint Martins
London, UK
class of 2022



Secretus;Secretion;Secret (Misconstruction Site #3) Steel, paper, charcoal.

New York City, 2025

In Secretus;Secretion;Secret, the third iteration of the Misconstruction Sites series, I address (the impossibility of?) a reckoning with the colonial lineages of my bloodlines while peering outwards, towards contemporary panoramicas of violence.






Projectile Dysfunction (Misconstruction Site #2)
Steel sculptures,  pins, white paint, white dress, dirt and grit.

New York City, 2025

This ongoing body of work focuses on the edification of immersive and ephemeral sets/environments. Fragility and precarious truths are expressed via protruding portal-like metal armatures, puncturing the space.

The symbol of the firearm vaguely prevails over the scene-- castrated rifles await activation, queered shots are fired inconclusively.

This conniving practice negotiates the affect of violence. My poetic stance, written as an Epistemology of Irrelevance AKA the Pursuit of Misconstruction, aids me in probing the linguistic and symbolic imaginaries designed by fascist power structures.




Eternal Scaffolding (Misconstruction site #1)
Paper, charcoal, masking tape, push pins, bubble wrap, packing tape, white dress, self, others.

New York City, 2025


In Eternal Scaffolding, I flirt with enclosure by converting a small room into a surreal cityscape. Using common papers in a structural fashion, I set up a liminal architecture only to carve into the whiteness with charcoal, demanding more space from the space. A soundscape made from blended field recordings and a non-verbal performance further activate the landscape.

My expectations for the audience vary according to the occasion: at times, they are involuntary paintbrushes, inevitably marking the space with their footsteps. Other times they become accidental actors, tripping over the design of the set. What stays the same is the will to blur subjectivity and norm, as the objects of an ever-shifting game of defeated expectation



Self Identifications (Stage I, II, III)
Photo transfers on satin, fabric, soft sculptures, shoes, wig, mannequin, stockings, self.

New York City, 2025

1 installation; 3 activations.

In Self-Identifications, I explore the theme of digital identities and the echo-chamber of art school in a room a la Colette–using fabric, finely crafted soft sculptures, photographic transfer collages, floating screens with video projections, and live performance. 

One iteration of  this site (Stage II) included a floating screen, sliced to the proportions of my computer, on which I projected the video performance (last slide)  grappling with self identification in systems of surveillance.





Amare e la Fine del Mondo
mdf panels, ink, charcoal,  transparent paper, drawing paper, light.

New York City, 2025

The installation features three hand crafted mdf panels reminiscent of old school theatre set designs and a series of charcoal drawings on crumpled papers of different weights and transparencies.

Exploring themes of grief and despair, a brutal wasteland is promptly interrupted by hidden large scale drawings and occasional video projections reminiscing (or proposing) a pulse of life in an otherwise desolate climate. 

Text is rendered illegible by texture and displaced language and public interaction is promoted by a dual reading of the pieces in the space.

Themes of migration, fractured lineages and political uncertainty are expressed via the overlapping of drawings made on crumpled tracing paper, a pictorial use of lighting and a spatial design that places the viewer in the ambiguous role of both actor and audience.






Echoes from Beyond the Portal
Ceramic sculptures, dirt, felted sculptures, found objects, light

New York City, 2024

An exploration on friencdship expressed through the concept of Portal Theory.
















© VANDALYSMI