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LILITH DIVINE
VIRTUAL SOLO EXHIBITION
6.11.2023 - 17.11.2023
“I shout my message to the world. That world that as a child made me suffer a lot, but that underneath still has something wonderful to tell... Keeping alive the dream of living only with my art.”
- Lilith Divine
BIOGRAPHY:
I was born in 1976 in a small village in northern Italy between the woods and the mountains in contact with the purest nature and wildlife but Faith had warlike plans for me... I was 8 when I lost my mother. I grew up with the love of my dog Diana who was always by my side and taught me what unconditional Love is. When she died, I learned for the first time how hard it is to survive depression, I just wanted to disappear from the world. I was abandoned, abused and so many other bad things, while I just wanted to live in my woods. I have always been, even now, an extremely shy person and drawing and painting was my way of "talking", my "safe house" from wickedness and bad things.
Every time I was done, I’d find a pencil and paper and draw. when I didn’t have the money for even one color, I crushed a flower, a leaf and a brick, I mixed water and made my watercolors, and drew. Growing up and having to face all this, every time I "touched the bottom of the well" fighting against anorexia, I was asked a drawing or a portrait and created something that could make another person happy, It gave me a piece of vitality' so I understood that the gift that was given to me couldn’t die with me, but had to be cultivated. Painting & drawing, saved literally my life. Many times.
I start drawing and painting very young first as a self-taught artist, until I graduated with full marks in 2001 at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, Italy. Meanwhile my love for art and the predisposition for freehand drawing opened the doors to the world of tattooing.
After the difficulties with the old Italian tattoo studios, dull and unwilling to teach and interested in me only because I was a young woman, I moved to Switzerland and as an apprentice ,began to travel and tattoo. In 2007, come back to Italy and opened the "Madness Circus Tattoo Shop & Creative Art Lab".
Gaining fame as a international tattoo artist, in 2013 I won the "best Black & Gray" award at the Tattoo convention in Rome, Italy. The invitations to the most prestigious tattoo conventions in the world did not take long to arrive in the following years: my dark art came to life on the flesh of people from Las Vegas, N.Y., Berlin, Frankfurt, London etc.
I exhibited my first works as soon as I reached the age of majority at the library of my village, Grignasco, then at the International Tattoo Expo in Rome and at an exhibition curated by Pinketts in Milan ,2014 . My drawings were used for the cover of two books and published in the “Black & White vol III, IV, V, by Out Of Step Books. In 2021 our work was published in the ” Dark Artist’s Book“ by Marvelous Art Gallery and in two online exhibition by Penumbra Art Gallery and a solo exhibition in March by Marvelous Art Gallery. Starting from here, I exhibited my paintings in Milan, London, Minneapolis and other places around the world until our great solo show together with my husband's sculptures in Asti, Italy, at the Biennale d'Arte.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Oil painting and charcoal drawing is always my first love and I live the art of tattooing as an extension of my artistic vision. Painting save litterally my life and the world of the suffering Nature is preponderant in my work. Skulls and animal parts mounted on human bodies prevail, creating non-existent mythological figures that launch messages of denunciation. Bones and horns are a complex and perfect architecture, in which I love to take refuge, as in primordial animal instincts. My ideal of perfect beauty in a world ruined by social media and appearances. I want to represent today's superficiality and materialism that have made us forget our most ancestral origins (for this reason the painted skulls are all of rare or extint monkeys and other animals found in museums). We never forget the spirits and souls of our ancestors and that nature created us and we are destroying it now, otherwise in the future we will be just skulls in a museum.
Between tattoos and the hardest job in the world, being a mom , I try to improve everyday day in a never ending story made of much practice, seminars, experiments (now I’m producing my oil colors by making them with old earths and pigments from 50 years ago), so much humility, dedication,pride and
dirty hands stinking of turpentine and safflower oil.
I shout my message to the world. That world that as a child made me suffer a lot, but that underneath still has something wonderful to tell... keeping alive the dream of living only with my art.