NATALIE R. CHIOVITTI
Natalie R. Chiovitti. Artist Table and Research. 2023. Prints on copy paper and mylar.
Lenses is a series consisting of two installations. The first installation is Evolving Perspectives (Lenses 1), a digital drawing with augmented reality. The second is Emerging Questions (Lenses 2), a four-panel digital mixed media installation. The Lenses Series creates conversation spaces for building a collective future that is sustainable through a variety of evolving perspectives and emerging questions. The idea of multiple perspectives (lenses) invites questions such as: What is included and excluded in each lens? Can different lenses co-exist? Are current lenses enough? What language and discourse are within various lenses?
Natalie R. Chiovitti. Evolving Perspectives (Lenses 1). 2023. Digital drawing on paper and augmented reality (AR) installation.
Evolving Perspectives (Lenses 1) is a digital drawing with augmented reality (AR) that explores a variety of viewpoints (lenses) for creating a collective sustainable future. Lenses are a metaphor for perspectives on sustainability (social, environmental, economic, and other). The idea of multiple lenses invites a reflexive stance with questions such as: What is included and excluded in each lens? Can these lenses co-exist? Are alternative lenses possible? What language and discourse are within these lenses? A person in the foreground is depicted wearing pairs of sunglasses (lenses) and is looking at the viewer. The person is lifting one pair of sunglasses away from her eyes to suggest the existence of multiple perspectives in addition to her own views. To visually situate the work in my local Mississauga community, I used my drawing studies of the plants from my garden and buildings located in Mississauga such as the Monroe buildings that are part of my fictitious depiction of a cityscape. I invite viewers to develop their evolving informed perspectives about sustainability. Through the AR aspect of the work, viewers immerse themselves within the drawn people to symbolically become part of contributing to a collective sustainable future.
Natalie R. Chiovitti. Emerging Questions (Lenses 2) 2023. Digital mixed media and drawing printed on paper installation. 4 panels of 72 x 20 inches
Natalie R. Chiovitti. Emerging Questions (Lenses 2) 2023. Digital mixed media and drawing printed on paper installation. 4 panels of 72 x 20 inches
Emerging Questions (Lenses 2) is a four-panel digital mixed media installation that explores assumptions about the pillars of sustainability (which I refer to as lenses). Through a questioning stance, viewers are invited to consider language and discourses through questions written in the work such as ‘what is included/excluded?’ in social, environmental, and economic lenses. Viewers are also invited to move beyond through learning and unlearning due to “sustainability [remaining to be] an open concept with many interpretations and context-specific understanding” (Purvis et al, p. 681). The questions depicted in the work invites viewers to imagine possibilities from viewers’ own contexts and positionality to contribute to a collective sustainable future. This is expressed by adding words throughout the outer first and fourth panels, depicting urban and rural environments, with individual people figures to represent individual responsibility, and the joining together of people as a community symbolized by people on the bench. The sprinkling of free-associated words such as ‘coexistence, creation, co-creation…’ along with question marks are to symbolize possible relationships in building a collective sustainable future. The use of alliteration is intentional and is inspired by the word ‘change’. The middle second and third panels of eyeglasses have been configured in different ways and directions as a metaphor for varying perspectives and possibilities in building a collective sustainable future.
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Natalie R. Chiovitti is a visual artist and graphic designer that invites evolving questions to explore intersections of art, design, and technology. Natalie combines her experience and studies in Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology with Art and Art History from the collaborative University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College program. Within her interdisciplinary practice, she engages in a combination of material and digital approaches through drawing, design, illustration, projection, photography, and installation. Natalie explores notions associated with pop-culture, social engagement, identity, consumerism, community, nature, and sustainability. Natalie integrates her work as a graphic designer and illustrator in marketing/advertising, publishing, and education fields. Natalie is an artist-in-residence for the 2022/2023 Visual Arts Mississauga Creative Residency. She is the 2022-2023 recipient of the Women’s Art Association of Canada Helga Scott Scholarship, and the 2022 recipient of the Art and Art History Faculty Award for Excellence in Design III.
