“[Wom]en’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.”

William Shakespeare

The Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC) in 2023 — as part of “Students as Researchers: Creative Practice and University Education” a Collateral Event organized by the New York Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Design, approved by Leslie Lokko, curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 — is hosting Laura Mega as artist in residence from January to December 2023. The artist, one of a group of 12 (of which six are from Italy and six from Singapore) is working on a mobile exploration of the crisis of water. The curatorial project conceived by Lanfranco Aceti will be a long term investigation in the elemental crisis of water, earth, wind, and fire. The artists will explore, according to their own personal aesthetic approaches and cultural underpinnings, the elemental crisis of water, its impact, and the consequences of the alterations of its mythologies and poetics. The curatorial brief titled, What If This Were The Case: The Waters We Are In, is inspired by the meaning of case: building up a case and case as a means of transportation. The international sharing of knowledge, understanding, and interpretations of the current crisis are paramount to resuscitate old mythologies and cultural postulates — or to develop new ones — truly inspired by communal structures of surviving, living, and possibly thriving.

Laura Mega works between Rome and New York. Also, she is the creator and curator of the ‘DREAMERS’ art project and co-founder of the ‘LAZZARO_art doesn’t sleep’ project. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and at the University of Image in Milan (a school centered on the five senses founded by photographer Fabrizio Ferri). Her practice combines drawing, text, embroidery, wool yarn, and printing. In addition, she sometimes uses other materials (such as pink epilating wax) on old trousseaus: set of clothes, linen, and other accessories that a bride brings with her to the new house. Through a contemporary and straightforward language, Laura Mega transforms symbols of a constricted and predefined femininity into works capable of conveying and investigating emotional, social, and political issues, where the irony leaves the observer responsible for the different depths of reading and interpretation. Laura Mega has exhibited at Ivy Brown Gallery (NYC), M55 Art Gallery (NYC), Resobox Gallery (NYC), Endless Biennial (NYC), Sejong Museum of Art (Seoul), MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (Rome), MADXI (Latina), Every Woman Biennial (London), Clio Art Fair (NYC), BAF – Bergamo Art Fair, Textile Museum of Busto Arsizio for the WTA – World Textile Art_Textile Biennial, Embroidery Museum (Valtopina), KOU Gallery (Rome). She has had collaborations with Moleskine S.p.A., SOME SERIOUS BUSINESS (Los Angeles), PULSE Art Fair – Art Basel Miami, Culture Monks (India), SENSE LAB (Milan), The Blue Bus Project (NYC). With the publishing house Pulcinoelefante (Milan), she has produced two artist’s books in a 33-copy limited edition. In 2021 she wrote and illustrated two artist books: “Amazoniano_ il nuovo HERO”, the result of her performative research on Amazon warehouse workers, and “ThePinkSide of WTF” in two versions, one of which is to be colored. Her work is part of the Moleskine Foundation, KOU Gallery, and private collections.