Sabrina Mezzaqui

Sabrina Mezzaqui serves as a Professor at Ababo, teaching foundational courses in Sculpture (Drawing for Sculpture, 6 credits) and Art Education and Communication (Visual Communication Design Methodology, 12 credits). Her artistic career spans over two decades with exhibitions at major institutions including MAXXI Rome, Triennale Milan, PS1 New York, and Museion Bolzano, demonstrating international recognition across European, American, and Asian venues.

Mezzaqui's research centers on temporal embodiment through meticulous manual labor, employing repetitive gestures like stringing beads, cutting paper, and calligraphic transcription. Her practice integrates literary references and philosophical inquiry through the systematic copying of 20th-century female thinkers' notebooks (Simone Weil 2010-2016, Hannah Arendt 2017-2021), while her video works document subtle natural phenomena such as light variations, falling snow, and dust motes. This meditative approach extends to collaborative platforms like the Marzabotto, Parma, San Gimignano, Cesena, and Maccastorna Working Tables, which structure collective artistic exploration.

Her exhibition trajectory from Sent Messages (1999) to Collecting Words (2024) reveals consistent thematic evolution across material studies and conceptual frameworks. Early works focused on individual gesture and textuality, gradually incorporating collaborative methodologies and environmental observation. The recurring motifs of red, white, and black palettes alongside everyday photography demonstrate her systematic investigation of color theory, material transformation, and the poetic potential of mundane objects within contemporary art discourse.

Mezzaqui's pedagogical philosophy emphasizes practice as material transformation, requiring 'consistency, habit, simplicity, repetition, slowness, and patience' to convert thought into experience. She cultivates inner exploration through structured exercises in drawing verbs (marking, underlining, tracing) while organizing student expeditions to galleries, artists' studios, and natural landscapes. Her teaching methodology, inspired by Rilke's exhortation to 'delve deep within yourself,' positions artistic creation as meditative silence that simultaneously 'nourishes emptiness' as a space for discovery.

Through the Working Tables initiative, Mezzaqui has established sustained collaborative frameworks across multiple Italian cities, creating physical and conceptual spaces for collective production that extend her studio practice into community engagement. These platforms facilitate the cross-pollination of techniques including weaving, piercing, and threadwork while maintaining her signature focus on temporal processes and material sensitivity.