LOVELY-RATZ

Bio
Linda Pietrobelli (2001) and Bri Zamengo (2002) graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Multimedia Arts at IUAV University of Venice.
In 2023, they formed the collective “LOVELY-RATZ”, born from the desire to work together, engaging with the dimension of the other and considering it as necessary for the development of thought.

Statement
By combining performance and photography to explore human dynamics, our research focuses on interpersonal relationships and social roles through queer and transfeminist perspectives, placing relational processes at the core of practice.
Collaboration is both a method and an ethical position: we understand artistic research as a shared process shaped by relations between people, objects, spaces, and practices, aiming to create spaces for encounter, reflection, and empathetic connection.
Our work unfolds between aesthetic exploration and conceptual inquiry through performative and embodied practices. We investigate how the body engages with and reconfigures space through perception. Garments act as carriers of identity, bridging fashion and performance as intertwined languages.
We engage with territory, nature, and communities, using situated and adaptive methodologies informed by care, slowness, and presence. Objects, gestures, and collective actions function as relational mediators, activating shared memory and forms of belonging.
These processes aim to generate temporary communities and micro-utopian spaces, where affective and political forms of resistance can emerge within everyday life.

I <3 Porto Vecchio

poster
2024

“THE FUTURE IS PORTO VECCHIO” / “porto vecchio mi manchi”
poster 100 x 70

The two posters were born from the dialogue between street art and the concept of mitteleuropa, creating a link between Brussels and Porto Vecchio (the Old Port) of Trieste.
In Brussels, near the European Parliament, we found the graffiti statement “THE FUTURE IS EUROPE,” commissioned by a real estate company. In response, we created the phrase “THE FUTURE IS PORTO VECCHIO,” a performative act aimed at challenging the imposed narrative and creating a symbolic connection between the two cities.
While commissioned graffiti follows an institutional type of communication, the other side of street art — such as tags and spontaneous messages — offers a less constrained, freer form of storytelling capable of expressing both individual and collective identities.
The poster “porto vecchio mi manchi” (“Porto Vecchio, I miss you”) expresses a shared feeling of nostalgia and presents a direct contrast: while Brussels is full of graffiti that delineates a lived urban identity, Porto Vecchio is instead an abandoned place, lacking such visual expression. Here, the “non-place” manifests as an absence of identity, waiting to be filled with new meanings.
Finally, an additional connection between Porto Vecchio and Brussels is represented by the stars, found in the architecture of Porto Vecchio’s Monumental Gate, in the logo of the Belgian beer Stella Artois, and in the European Union flag. This formal analogy overlays cultural symbols and explores the perception of belonging to a transnational European space.
The posters are featured in the publication “POP”, which collects the outcomes of the project “POP Adriatico - Porto Osservatorio Partecipato”.