Alma Bucciali
I work in between things. Mediums, categories, characters : I want them not fitting well, deceiving traditional viewpoints, escaping categorizations. Neither ornaments nor artworks, neither human nor animal, neither about myself nor completely turned outwards; such are my creations.
A many-medium artist whose favourite means of expression are embroidery, engraving and textile arts, Alma Bucciali lives and works in Alsace, France.
Daughter of a re-known French printmaker, Rémy Bucciali, she discovers at a very early age the universe of drawing and printmaking in the family workshop. The many artists who are associated with the workshop of her father (such as Alain Clément, Gérard Titus-Carmel, or Raymond Waydelich) will help her forge her artistic gaze.
Alma studied illustration and narration in the Ecole Supérieure d’Art de Lorraine in Epinal. She discovers the works of Louise Bourgeois and Annette Messager, and also is interested in feminist sociologists such as Judith Butler Françoise Héritier. Her works become more political, and she begins to question gender. Nourished with personal symbolism, found in cathedral bestiaries and medieval and renaissance art (especially Matthias Grunewald’s), her art gets invaded by hybrids and chimeras, semi-human figures.
She produces her first fabric guns, and having seen the works of Sophie Lécuyer and Aurélie William Leveaux, decides to teach herself some embroidery skills.
In 2012, she enters the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nancy where she explores textile arts and tries installation works. She will travel to Shanghai to attend the classes of Paul Devautour’s research unit in Shanghai, « l’Ecole Offshore ». This determining encounter allowed her to see her work on a more global background and reinforced her will to create a sensitive, yet political art. She began working on a very long, activist tapestry project: Bayeux pour tou.te.s (Bayeux for all – a narration of the long journey of the equal marriage law in France) that is still work in progress today.
After her graduation she moved to Strasbourg, where she collaborated with La Station, Strasbourg’s LGBT association and queer space, to organize collective workshops about Bayeux pour tou.te.s.
Always questioning the status of artworks and its links with everyday life, she produced a series of embroidered napkins, found in local charity shops and yard sales, to reclaim the value of women’s works and defend a concise, precise, activist work, opposing the monumentalism and instant works of our time.
In 2016, her first solo exhibition took place in the Tache Papier studio, in Dijon.
Her work is shown in European art fairs, such as art Karlsruhe or the Affordable Art Fair (Hamburg, Stockholm, Brussels).
Since two years she has settled in Haut-Rhin to collaborate with her father at Bucciali Editions, learning to be an editor. She perpetuates the family savoir-faire of printmaking.
Last year, her works were shown at St’art, Strasbourg’s contemporary art fair, where they were nominated for the City of Strasbourg’s Art Prize.