Letizia Lopreiato

Caption of the image

Born Year, Month, Day (Location)
Website letizialopreiato.com

Letizia Lopreiato is a multilingual visual poet and film photographer working with 35mm photography, poetry, spoken word, and Super 8, developing her social documentary practice with an art-photography style and with main focus on eco-sustainability, accessibility and social inclusion. The artist is a professional member of Visual Artists Ireland and she has recently been awarded a one year artist in residence at Dean Arts Studios, Dublin, Ireland. This by following her latest UK residency at ONCA Arts Gallery, Brighton (UK), and her two solo exhibitions and artist talk titled “The Journey of Sonia’s Trees”, with a focus on Lopreiato’s first full application of sensory technology to promote diversity and social inclusion in her work and its’ exhibitions. Magnum Photos Portfolio Review featured artist (November 2020), Letizia embraced film photography in 2018, a few months after her visual impairment diagnosis.
Lopreiato’s artwork has been acquired and it is part of the OPW, Office of Public Works’ Ireland’s State Art Collection. The artist writes and performs her work of visual poetry poetry in English, Italian and Spanish, and her work is both exhibited and published internationally, in the UK, Ireland and Italy.

Bio & Career

Her latest Sonia’s Trees (2018-2021) artist-book got published by The Outside Press, and printed by Plus Print, Dublin, in December 2022 and it is part of the PhotoIreland Collection of Irish PhotoBooks supported by PhotoIreland organization. Her artists-book was launched and its project exhibited in Brighton, UK, between April and June 2022, as well as at both PhotoIreland Halftone Print Fair at The Library Project, and at Dublin Art Book Fair, at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (November – December 2021), Dublin, Ireland. This social documentary is the pilot project of a wider social documentaries’s series on eco-sustainability which the artist is keeping on working both in Ireland and the UK. Sonia’s Trees has been developed From 2018 to 2021, Letizia worked on a social documentary and arts-based awareness campaign
on eco-sustainability called Sonia’s Trees as part of PhotoIreland Festival 2021 Open Program. Letizia’s photo-story narrated the vision of Ireland’s reforestation through native seeds and trees, the Irish city-countryside duality, and the topics of place and identity from an environmental psychology perspective.

Creative process: the inclusion of multilingual spoken word in all of Letizia’s artworks, in the form of audio-visual installations, accompanies a creative documentary and art photography style. Altogether, this multi-layered and multidisciplinary approach allows Letizia to refocus the text and image relationship, creating pan-sensorial art installations through her visual poetry practice, that open the experience of her artworks to an audience at all levels of able-bodiedness and neuro-divergency too. Letizia’s vocational interest in promoting cooperation and development within the visual arts, with a specific focus on eco-sustainability, accessibility and pluriversal social inclusion in photography, has evolved both through her autobiographical and social documentary work, and developed through her on-going research on sensory technologies’ applications in her art-practice.

Publications

Appears in

2021, Sonia’s Trees 2018-2021, published by The Outside Press and printed by Plus Print. Dublin, Ireland.¹
2021, WorkShowGrow, Unite, printed publication, artist profile and photo feature,UK ²
2020, All Kinds Gallery artists book printed publication and on-line gallery, charity project in support of MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland)³

Awards and honours

2021, Agility Award, Arts Council Ireland
2021, Visual Arts Research Bursary, Arts Council Ireland
2021, The Curatorship Portfolio Review Award, winner of portfolio review contest with five international reviewers, Spain
2020, Connect Award, Arts Council Ireland
2020, Artist of the Month, Cassandra Voices, arts and culture publisher, Dublin, Ireland, ⁴

Projects

Sonia’s Trees (2018-2021)

Sonia’s Trees (2018-2021) is a labour of love, a manifestation in physical form of a call to protect and an invitation to care, felt and shared by the artist through her visual poetry performative creative process.

Sonia’s Trees is the result of over three and half years of creative work by visual poet and film photographer Letizia Lopreiato. The body of work developed as a social documentary on eco-sustainability, utilising participative observation based on sociology and environmental psychology research methodology; Letizia chose to embody this documentary process through the life-changing events of the story’s protagonist, Sonia McGuirk, a dear friend and single mum from Dublin who decided to relocate to the West of Ireland in early 2018, looking for a more heart centred and sustainable life for herself and the family she has been raising.

Each edition of Sonia’s Trees artbook comprises of five accordion folded photobooks, printed on Munken Pure Rough housed in a Sirio Colour Pietra card mailer/slipcase, containing acknowledgements and introductory letters written by the artist, outlining the project’s concept.

Also included is the artist’s handmade art-packs made with recycled material, and containing Irish native seeds from organic farms in County Clare and County Cork, as well as a Polaroid format printed photograph from the project, a sign of gratitude from the artist to her audience; her action in support of her artivism awareness campaign on eco-sustainability, which Sonia’s Trees is the pilot project of, starting point of an international cooperation and development social documentaries’ series she is creating, titled “The Journey of Sonia’s Trees”.

Each copy of these limited run edition of 50, was manually folded and bound by award winning printer Plus Print Dublin, with a belly band carrying a QR code, linking to the artist’s website dedicated project page. This last reflecting Letizia Lopreiato’s vocation towards accessibility and pluri-diversity inclusion, throughout all phases of her art practice’s development.

Letizia Lopreiato is a multilingual visual poet and film photographer supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, while she is working with 35mm photography, poetry, spoken word, and Super 8 film, to develop her autobiographical and social documentary practice, with an art-photography style. Magnum Photos Portfolio Review featured artist (2020), Letizia embraced film photography in February 2018, after her visual impairment diagnosis. The artist writes and performs her poetry in English, Italian and Spanish, her work is published internationally, in the UK, Ireland and Italy.

Lopreiato is a professional member of Visual Artists Ireland, her work is part of Ireland’s Office of Public Works State Art Collection. Among the artist’s main exhibitions we see: Phoenix Art Space, Brighton, UK (Solo show: April-May 2022), Exposure Alberta Photography Festival 2022 Canada (Solo show: February 2022), PhotoIreland Halftone Print Fair – The Library Project (Group Show: November – December 2021), Dublin Art Book Fair – Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (Group show: November – December 2021), Ireland. PhotoIreland Festival Open Program 2021, with a series of solo shows, between Dublin and Waterford in Ireland (Solo shows: July – October 2021),at Exposure Alberta Photography Festival Canada (Solo show: February 2021).

She is an awardee of the Arts Council Ireland: Agility Award (November 2021), the Visual Arts Research Bursary (May 2021), and the Connect Award (December 2020).

The artist comes from a Magna Cum Laude research background in International Relations and over a decade international program-management experience in the technology industry across four different countries (Ireland, Spain, Denmark, Italy). Her interest lies in the application of barrier-free technologies for pluri-diversity inclusion, access and equality.

Letizia’s artistic practice is engaged in reclaiming a different way to tell a story: from empathy to connection, from impairment to empowerment, from grief to love, from confinement to acceptance, social engagement and equality for our environment, both at an individual and at a community level.

Published by The Outside Press
Presentation box, with paper slip cover
Five accordion folded photobooks, seeds and loose leaf photographs
120 x 20 x 170 mm⁵