Sehnsucht Atelier presents multidisciplinary artist and performer Mina Serrano in a personal tribute to Italian music icon Mina. 

Grown up observing the Transformists from southern Spain, the ability of those artists to transmute into something “bigger than life creatures and set their hearts on fire on stage” deeply stuck with Mina’s sensibility while exploring her practice. 

As a performer, Mina is interested in those sacred and intimate moments of makeover which define the ultimate creature exploding on stage. She is fascinated with the process leading to the artistic hyper human beyond the human: “the moment you start seeing the creature you dreamed of looking back at you in the mirror, slowly constructing itself, it’s almost like an eclipse of identity, and that for me, is the purest moment.” 

This work is not only a tribute but also an embodied study of those transformative elements which are so key to Mina Mazzini’s artistic persona. “The first time I saw Mina (Mazzini), I think it was on her Ancora Ancora music video – Mina S says – everything was golden, I saw her face in this very powerful close up, with her tragic eyes covered in golden paillettes, and her lips shining in golden gloss, and she shacked her golden hair as she performed the song irradiating with her eyes and her hands. It spoke to me on so many levels that I felt I was going to explode.

For me, besides being an immense singer and composer, Mina is a transformation master. Since when she quitted her public life in the 70s, everything we know about her are her changing hypnotic portraits and album covers, where she metamorphoses in every possible way and that’s where I connect with her.”

Castagnetti focuses on natural, feminine, and animal forms, decrypting her feelings towards reality. Describing her work as the result of daily-life epiphanies, Castagnetti’s touching and allegorical practice is deeply influenced by the meaning of mystery in life and human sensations.

“I’d like to depict an alternative world inhabited by multifaceted beings, in which the human presence does not lead to an anthropocentric-driven system, but to a horizontal co-presence in which the elements merge into each other. This ecosystem is constellated with cognizant, ungendered yet non-active presences, somehow crystalized in an endless contemplation, all connected by a higher consciousness. Time does not exist the way we perceive it, it is stiffened in images.” 

Find out more about Ambra Castagnetti here. 

Sehnsucht Atelier presents Fucina series I starring franco-armenian dancer & choreographer Aline Derderian

Aline describes her works as a connection of her performance art background, Armenian roots and postmodern dance in order to develop a choreographic process that questions and challenges the archetypal female dancing body as a catalyst for contemporary feminine performance writing and cultural survival. “I’m interested in the human being more than anything else. I now believe in the idea that we as people cannot contrive our true essence or fragility; they are both things you cannot learn: the roots.” 

Graduating from a BA(hons) Performance Design & Practice at Central Saint Martins, in 2016 Aline Derderian received the Leverhulme Grant for the Arts enabling her to pursue her path on the MFA Choreography programme at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Currently on her third year of a PhD thesis at Rennes 2 University, Aline choreographs, dances and performs with the company CONSENSUS & ALINE DERDERIAN she founded in 2014 and teaches choreography at the Fine Arts department of Rennes 2 University.

Powerful, fierce and yet poetic, Aline’s performative practice leads us through an emotional journey towards cultural and social awareness.