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.

Ti prometto un miracolo

Ti prometto un miracolo (I promise you a miracle) is a photographic journey that begins in the transitional, impersonal spaces of modern life — Gare du Nord and Zaventem Airport in Brussels — where a simple phrase appears amid the crowds: “I promise you a miracle.” This message, fragile and hopeful, becomes the starting point for a visual exploration of Europe’s contradictions, where the dream of unity often dissolves into isolation and forgotten places.
The project moves beyond Brussels to Charleroi, offering a deeper look into spaces often left out of official narratives. While Brussels, as the capital of Europe, symbolizes modernity and institutional power, just beyond its surface lies another city: one marked by decay, silence, and the emotional traces of lives in transit.
These overlooked places — industrial zones, empty neighborhoods, and marginal spaces — reflect the gap between the promises of a unified Europe and the realities of those left on the margins. Inspired by Svetlana Boym’s concept of “reflective nostalgia,” the project uses memory not to return to the past, but to understand the present through the beauty of what remains.
The Kranz typeface, designed by Studio Iknoki and inspired by the Vienna Secession, visually supports this narrative, acting as a symbolic bridge between past and present. It enhances the emotional atmosphere of the project, echoing the quiet weight of nostalgia and the longing embedded in modern urban spaces.