Marinella Senatore

1977, Cava de’ Tirreni, Italy

Marinella Senatore is one of the most influential figures in international contemporary art. Her multidisciplinary practice - spanning video, photography, performance and participatory installation - is grounded in social inclusion and the collective dimension of making art. Trained between Naples, Madrid and London, she has exhibited in the world's leading international contexts, including the Venice Biennale, MAXXI in Rome and the Palais de Tokyo.
Her work is often built through processes of collaboration with local communities, where art becomes a tool of emancipation, narrative and political action. Light, the body, gesture and memory are recurring elements in her work, which combines cinematic aesthetics with social activism.

Marinella Senatore

Nui Simu 3, photographic print on paper, 2010
150x100 cm

Nui Simu 3 is an immersive, cinematic still drawn from one of Marinella Senatore's most emblematic projects: Nui Simu, created in 2010 with the participation of hundreds of citizens in Enna, Sicily. The work captures a night scene dense with atmosphere, where backlit bodies emerge from a backdrop of light and rain, creating an image suspended between ritual and reality.
The title, in Sicilian dialect, means "We Are" and underscores the work's collective, identity-driven value: it is a statement of presence, of resistance, of shared existence.
Light, the central element, does not illuminate but reveals: the blurred outlines, the darkened faces, the body postures suggest an emotional tension that goes beyond narrative, opening onto a symbolic dimension.
Through this image, Marinella Senatore tells of a humanity made of silent gestures and invisible communities finally becoming visible. The work is an ode to collective strength, to the beauty of participation and to the transformative power of art.