LOVELY-RATZ

Bio
Linda Pietrobelli (2001) and Ambra Zamengo (2002) are currently pursuing their 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
Bringing together performance and photography in the analysis of human dynamics, with a particular focus on interpersonal relationships and roles in society, our artistic research focuses on individual communication modes, privileging women and queer perspectives. Often, other people become the focal point of the creative process and the work itself.
We constantly work to create spaces for dialogue and reflection, stimulating an empathetic connection. In the harmonious union of aesthetics and conceptual research, our artistic practice shapes visual and theoretical connections through performative practices and bodily gestures. Through performance, we explore how the body interacts with the surrounding space, reinterpreting and shaping the environment through the body, and through its perception.
Body and garment merge in a close connection: clothes become a bearer of identity, both individual and cultural, interacting in a profound relationship that combines the concepts of fashion and performance. This approach allows us to explore and communicate the complex dynamics of human relationships, places, individuals, and communities.
In the pursuit of a pre-practical human and emotional dialogue, we are interested in better understanding the human being in all its facets, through a psychological and anthropological approach to understanding other cultures. Hence, our interest in connecting territory, nature, and the human subject through expressive means such as photography, performance, and other artistic channels.

Lozio Settembre 2024

2024 - 2025

Project supported by “Falìa* AIR 2024”, curated by Alice Vangelisti
Design by Michele Bellinaso

This publication emerges as a testament to a participatory practice aimed at exploring the relational fabric of a small community through shared memory and storytelling. In the dispersed municipality of Lozio, where around 350 people live divided among four hamlets, we propose a project that values the personal stories of local women, weaving their narratives into a network that reveals the invisible social fabric of this community.
The work consists of a book and a collection of “fairy tales” born from a participatory process: each woman tells an anecdote about another one she has chosen, takes a photograph of her in her home, fills out a form with biographical data, and donates a piece of fabric. The storyteller decides how to portray the person she has chosen, selecting the pose and the setting—a gesture that reveals her way of seeing her. This becomes a symbolic act of identity transfer, in which the signature and photograph represent the image of a woman seen through the eyes of another. Each signature, each name, is a gesture of identification that transcends the mere bureaucratic act, transforming the objective description into an experience of empathetic immersion.
The work thus becomes a living archive, a collective narrative that not only documents but transforms and renews the perception of self and of the other. The act of telling and portraying becomes an experience of exchange: the observer is in turn observed, the storyteller is in turn told. The material element plays a fundamental role in this research: fabric, writing, and signature become instruments of identity transfer— tangible signs of a relationship that unfolds in space and time. Each gesture, each trace left by the participants becomes a fragment of collective history, revealing how identity is a process in constant transformation.

The book was selected for the second edition of NUSCA (Nothing Until Something Comes Along), an Independent Festival dedicated to Cinema and Publishing, which took place in Venice in May 2025.