Interview with: Diego Azzola
August 2025
Welcome Diego, first tell us about your background and why you chose to pursue this career.
Do you remember the first artwork that stirred something inside you?
My background is rooted in a constant search for meaning through visual language. I’ve always been drawn to images and objects that carry a kind of tension, something unresolved or quietly unsettling. Choosing to pursue art wasn’t really a decision made at a
specific moment; it was more like following a thread that kept pulling me in, deeper and deeper. Over time, it became clear that this was the space where I could ask questions without needing answers, and express things that can’t easily be put into words.
As for the first artwork that stirred something in me, I can’t point to just one. It was more a series of encounters: pages from books, strange objects, certain textures or gestures in other artists’ work that left a mark. What I do remember clearly is the feeling: a mix of
unease, curiosity, and recognition. That sensation has stayed with me and continues to guide my practice.
How would you describe your artistic practice? What are the recurring elements, themes, and concepts you refer to?
My artistic practice originates from an obsessive attention to detail and a deep impulse toward transformation,a constant drive to modify, hybridize, and create monstrous or liminal figures. I explore a kind of visceral still life, where forms seem to emerge from
internal organs, placentas, and gestational matter, suggesting birth, mutation, and decomposition at once.
I work across painting and sculpture, using hybrid and experimental media that reflect the fluid, often ambiguous nature of the subjects I portray. There’s a strong fascination with the marine world and its creatures, symbols of re-emergence, continuous adaptation, and bodily metamorphosis. These beings often embody a tension between sexuality and terrestrial environment, becoming sites of conflict, transition, and new meaning.
At its core, my work aims to give life to new identities, contemporary, post-human figures that resist categorization, inhabiting a space between the organic and the artificial, the intimate and the alien.
What projects do you plan to work on this year?
This year, I'm developing several interconnected projects that expand my research on hybrid identities and the relationship between the organic and the artificial. One is a new series of paintings focused on the sea monsters found in urban fountains,
exploring the tension between water and stone, the mythological and the architectural, in an imagined marine ecosystem emerging within the city. Alongside this, I'm working on a group of sculptures investigating the relationship between skin, tattoo, and inorganic fabric, questioning the surface of the body as both a boundary and a narrative space. I’m also continuing my exploration of anthropo-zoomorphic forms, creating hybrid figures that blur species and identity. A broader reflection that runs through all these projects is my
desire to dissolve the boundaries between drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, allowing these languages to contaminate and expand each other in unexpected ways.
Is there a particular reason why you decided to use painting as a medium of expression?
Painting is a medium that requires time, calm, and a certain slowness, it creates space for perception to shift, and for reality to be gradually transformed. This processual nature mirrors the deeper desire behind my work: the impulse to modify, to mutate, to reimagine form through sensation and duration.
Painting, for me, is not only a technique but a state, one that allows a continuous negotiation between the imagined and the tangible. Its richness lies in its potential to absorb change, to hold contradictions, and to evolve over time. This is why, even as I work
across sculpture and installation, painting remains a central and generative part of my practice.
Who are some of your favorite artists? Or who has been inspirational recently?
Lately, I’ve been really inspired by artists like Cuoghi, Agnes, Filip Mrazovic, and Hans Bellemer. What draws me to their work is the originality and depth they bring to their practice, whether it’s through innovative techniques, thought-provoking concepts, or the
way they challenge conventional boundaries. Their work encourages me to push my own creative limits and explore new ideas with more freedom and confidence. They remind me that art is not just about aesthetics but also about questioning, experimenting, and
expressing something deeply personal.
Clearly, you have a distinct and identifiable personal style; how did you develop it?
Was there a specific person or movement that inspired you?
I believe that style is actually a consequence rather than the main achievement. What’s truly challenging to develop is one’s unique perspective, the gaze, the themes, and what truly drives you from within. It’s about resisting clichés and fleeting trends and instead
managing to penetrate deeply into your own authentic territory. Technique, style, and even the themes themselves emerge from a sort of melting pot, a mixture of hundreds of artists, readings, and experiences. At a certain point of maturity, these elements no longer need explicit explanation because every choice naturally arises from that shared creative reservoir.
We are at the end of this short interview, would you like to add something about your artistic research?
How did you find the collaboration with our gallery?
Thanks for the space. My research focuses on themes that resist clarity, ambiguity, fragmentation, and the tension between what’s visible and what’s withheld. It’s a continuous process rather than a fixed statement.
I discovered the gallery through Instagram. The collaboration has been smooth and professional, and I appreciated the freedom to present my work without compromises.