“Drawing is a practice that expands time.” An interview with Marta Roberti

The human presence in your work is always female: why is that?

Not only is it female—they’re all self-portraits. My earliest works were stop-motion videos, and I needed a model to study body movements and facial expressions. The most accessible person was myself. So I started photographing myself and using my own body as a reference. Since then, this practice has never left me. Over time, however, it has taken on a different meaning. I draw a female body simply because it is the body I know from the inside, the one through which I experience the world. It is my primary tool for understanding. The self-portrait has become a way to inhabit other identities. In the series dedicated to the mythological creatures of the Divine Comedy—which sparked my interest in mythology and archaeology—I identified with figures such as the Minotaur, transforming him into a Minotauress, the Centaur, who became a Centaura, and Lucifer, who became Lucifera, as well as other hybrid beings. The same happened in the series dedicated to the goddesses of ancient civilizations. Before creating each drawing, there is always a performative phase. In my studio, I assume the postures of the figures I’m studying, trying to understand their weight, balance, and bodily tension. I take selfies and use those images as a starting point for the drawing. I need to go through my own body to understand that of another. It’s a way of embodying the image even before drawing it. The self-portrait isn’t meant to affirm a stable identity, but to show its constant transformation. My body becomes a space of passage, a place where images, myths, animals, and archetypal figures can be embodied and take shape. For this reason, even though they are self-portraits, I hope that viewers can recognize something of themselves in them. My face is not the subject of the work: it is the medium through which other presences become visible. Ultimately, the self-portrait, as I understand it, is not an affirmation of identity, but the place where identity is called into question and opens itself up to metamorphosis.

I’d like to ask you to delve deeper into this idea of metamorphosis, which seems to me to be a central aspect of your work.

For me, drawing means crossing thresholds. Every piece asks my permission to cross one, to enter a territory I had not yet inhabited. I remember, for example, the first time I depicted explicitly sexual scenes in one of my early videos. It wasn’t simply a matter of tackling a new subject, but of overcoming an inner boundary, granting myself the freedom to depict something I hadn’t dared to look at until then. The same thing happened when I began working on the creatures of metamorphosis in the Divine Comedy. The first time I depicted myself with the head of a bull, becoming a Minotaur, or when I took on the body of a Centaur, I felt as though I were crossing another threshold. I wasn’t just inventing a fantastical figure—I was questioning my very concept of identity. Every step of this kind changes me as well. That’s why I consider drawing a practice of transformation. Each work takes me to a place I didn’t know before, and once I’ve crossed that threshold, I can never go back to being exactly who I was before.

When you’re putting together an exhibition, how do you go about it? What connections do you use to group the works together?

I really like this question because it allows me to express an aspect of my work that isn’t always easy to grasp. My drawings can be viewed in a gallery or at an art fair as standalone works, but in reality they almost always emerge within the context of an exhibition project. In this sense, I consider them site-specific works: it is the place itself that inspires their creation. There are spaces that have played a decisive role in my work. I’m thinking, for example, of the Church of Sant’Orsola in Florence or the CARME Church in Brescia. These are places that have sparked my imagination in a way that a neutral space—like a gallery’s “white cube” —could hardly do. Some places possess a memory, a layering of lives and images that becomes part of the creative process. In the case of Sant’Orsola, knowing that it had been a monastery for centuries, I imagined that the nuns had called upon me as a painter of their time to paint frescoes in that church. It was a game of the imagination, but also a way to establish a dialogue with the history of the place. From that fantasy emerged an entire series of drawings conceived exclusively for that space: saints, always depicted through self-portraiture, who lived in a profound relationship with animals. They were nude, vulnerable figures, immersed in a dimension of metamorphosis and continuity between the human and the living. I felt that only that church could welcome them. So when I curate an exhibition, I never think of it as a simple arrangement of works. Rather, I try to listen to the place, to understand its rhythm, its light, its memory, and to build a dialogue between the space and the images. The works relate to one another, but even before that, they relate to the architecture that houses them. Each exhibition thus becomes a unique organism that could not exist in the same way elsewhere. This is why I consider the exhibition an integral part of the creative process. It is not the end of the work—it is its origin. The works are not simply placed in a space; they come into being because that space, with its history and presence, has called them into existence.

How do you work from a technical standpoint?

I’ve developed a personal technique based on traditional carbon paper. I create my own carbon paper by applying layers of oil pastels to sheets of glossy paper, forming a thin layer of pigment that—through the marks I make on the back of the sheet—is transferred by pressure onto a second sheet, the sheet of paper that will become the surface on which I create my work. I work without immediately seeing the result: the image forms slowly, as a mirror image of the drawing traced on the top sheet, and reveals itself only gradually. This makes the process a continuous dialogue between intention and the unexpected, control and surprise. I use almost exclusively oil pastels in metallic colors—such as various shades of gold, copper, and aluminum—which, when transferred onto black paper, react to light, making the surface iridescent and ever-changing. What interests me is not only the final image but also its slow process of emergence. The drawing emerges through a succession of small marks. Carbon paper thus becomes not merely a tool for reproduction, but a device that allows me to explore gesture, material, and chance, letting the work emerge from the encounter between what I anticipate and what happens during the creative process. The final result produces a chromatic quality that often resembles that of ancient frescoes. This happens because the color is never applied uniformly: I reuse the same carbon paper multiple times, and since it has already released part of the pigment in previous passes, it transfers varying amounts of color onto the surface each time. Each use also retains the memory of previous marks, which remain imprinted on the paper and resurface in subsequent impressions. It is precisely this layering that generates depth, texture, and a vibrant surface, in which the passage of time during the creative process remains visible. I am interested in the drawing not appearing as a newly produced image, but as something that seems to have emerged slowly, as if it had already existed and time had left its mark on it.

I’ve noticed that your works consist of a series of sheets glued together: why is that?

My drawings are almost always composed of multiple sheets glued together. This stems first and foremost from a practical need: I prefer to work on smaller sheets, even when the final drawing is very large. It allows me to maintain greater freedom and precision in my gestures. But the deeper reason is another. I never view the sheet of paper as a closed format, a boundary within which the image must necessarily remain. For me, each sheet is an initial nucleus from which the drawing can continue to expand. If, while I’m working, I feel that the image needs more space, I add a new sheet. The composition grows alongside my thoughts. That is why my works remain open-ended for a long time. As long as they are in my studio, they can always be modified: I add paper, cut out parts, move them around, and reassemble the whole. It’s a process very similar to collage, even though the final result often doesn’t reveal all these transformations. I want the drawing to retain this potential to become something else. Even when it seems finished, it continues to carry within itself the memory of its transformations. After all, this, too, is a form of metamorphosis: the work does not arise from a predetermined format, but grows according to an internal necessity, like an organism that continues to develop until it finds its own balance.

Do you work on multiple drawings simultaneously, or do you prefer to focus your attention on a single piece at a time?

When I’m working on a drawing that I like, I’m already imagining the next one; I begin to study it, and it’s often a continuation of the previous one. I like to work in series.

What is your conception of space and time?

My concept of time is far removed from that of a linear succession of events. I feel close to Aby Warburg and to Georges Didi-Huberman’s interpretation of his work, according to which images survive, return, and resurface in different eras. They flow through the centuries like underground currents and, at a certain moment, take on a new form in another present. This idea of the return of images is also linked to my conception of time, which I feel is close to the thought of Henri Bergson and his image of the cone of memory. For Bergson, the past is not separate from the present, but a living dimension that continues to exist within us. The image of the cone represents this coexistence: at its widest base lies the totality of memory—the sum of experiences, images, and perceptions accumulated throughout one’s entire existence; the apex, on the other hand, coincides with the present, the point at which memory contracts and is selected in function of action. Daily life, with its practical demands, its pace, and the need to constantly react to the world, often leads us to live at the tip of the cone. We are focused on the immediate present, on what needs to be done, and a very large part of our memory remains in the background, like a silent reserve. In contrast, during moments of pause, contemplation, or meditation, we can broaden our perception and move closer to the widest part of the cone: a space where images, memories, and associations can emerge freely, without being immediately subordinated to utility or action. When I lived in Asia, I heard stories of people who, through the practice of continuous meditation, were even able to recall past lives! Perhaps this is the state I seek through the practice of drawing, which thus becomes an exercise in the expansion of time. I am no longer confined to the immediate present, but I come into contact with a temporal depth where past and present coexist. The act of drawing allows the tip of the cone to open once again toward its broader base. It is in this expanded space that I feel images emerging. Not as completely new inventions, but as forms that belong to a broader memory and that, through my gesture, find a new embodiment. In the slow passage of time during drawing, my attention opens up and allows distant, archetypal, and forgotten images to resurface. Once, I created an image that sprang from my imagination and later found it in a book on ancient Egyptian art: a woman lying in front of a crocodile. I’m often inspired by images I see in ancient art catalogs, and so I rework them, transform them, and recreate them differently, while retaining a sort of essence. But that time, I could hardly believe that thousands of years ago, someone had imagined that very same pose and scene, and that I had created something very similar without ever having seen it. It was a wonderful feeling—a confirmation of the inner connection I feel with those murals.