Lost in space
by Giada Ripa
(text by Joyce Korotkin; Nyarts magazine)

Four years and 26 moves later, photographer Giada Ripa di Meana has finally settled into an apartment/studio in New York's West Village. An Italian raised in Brussels, she has roamed the world as a backdrop for examinations of dislocation in both public and private space.

After documenting her recent transient search for intimate space, Giada is now exploring public space, into which she imposes images of her self. Sometimes she takes precedence over space, and sometimes it takes precedence over her.

In the latest photographic cycle Lost in space, Giada moves nimbly in external settings in search of a place, time, and light but, above all, of that obscure emotion to be captured and rendered universal. She is an actress (as in her Private Space), not a protagonist, in landscapes in which nature or architecture have long stories to tell, and she portrays herself leaving her face anonymous with a specific renunciation of her own individuality.

These "impulsive reactions to public space that capture momentary impressions through light" are pinned to the walls, stacked in boxes, and downloaded as a computer slide show. The series is conceived of as an installation; projected in a cinematic mode and narrative sequences.

The photographs and images of the slide projection have been taken in the last three years around the world using it as a backdrop for experimenting dislocation in both private and public space

Prose and poetry, action and thought, intersect in the Lost in Space photographs. In these the artist, using a strictly female vocabulary, skillfully fuses performance and photography but without any theatricality. They seem to evoke, rather, a cathartic ritual in which a woman rediscovers herself by confronting the world.

Raised in Brussels and in London, Giada Meana, b.1973 has started her career in photography after studying at ICP. Since then she has roamed the world as a backdrop for examinations of dislocation in both public and private space.

She has been living in New York for the past five years both as an artist exhibiting her work in NY, Belgium, Italy and China, and correspondent photographer (Grazia Neri agency) for some of the main Italian magazines including, Io Donna, Corriere della sera, Espresso, Class, Amica.