November 03, 2025

In Dialogue with Liana Solis, Founder of Galleria Matria

INTERVIEW WITH GALLERIA MATRIA

BY VERTIGINI STUDIO

VS: Let’s start from the beginning, but also from the end: when did you realise you needed to create a gallery? Was it a decision or a necessity? Or, to quote Rainer Maria Rilke, was it simply something that “had to be done”?

L.S: Let’s start from the beginning, but also from the end... Wonderful! To answer, I can only quote the beloved Rilke: it wasn’t a calculated or strategic decision, but the perception of something that “had to be done.”Yet this necessity gradually transformed into a targeted strategy.

I wanted a space—both physical and conceptual—where photography and visual arts could be presented with curatorial attention, focused on exploring human fragility and, above all, on female voices.This was essential to counteract the limited visibility and the habitual circulation of the same names in the art world, a situation that narrows the perception of artistic quality.

This need arose partly from a historical void in the system, but also from an inner fullness, a moral and intellectual duty. Matria was born from that point: from the need to give shape to a space that could breathe differently, with the calm of those who know that the time of art is never immediate.

VS:The name Matria is powerful, almost archetypal. It evokes genealogies, roots, but also silent revolutions.Where does this name come from?

Did it come before the project, or did the project find its name as it grew?

L.S:The name Matria is indeed the conceptual manifesto of the gallery. It came before the project itself, as a compass.

The Latin root mater does not evoke only the mother in the biological sense, but the matrix in its most profound and figurative meaning: the source,

the origin, the womb, the place of gestation and welcome. We wanted a polarity opposed to Patria, with its connotations of boundary, law, and hierarchy. Matria is, for us, the conceptual antidote: a place that nurtures cultural genealogy and the silent revolutions that emerge through care and growth.

It is a name that commits us every day to honoring hospitality and the fertility of critical thought.

VS: In what way is your gallery a form of writing? I ask because I often think of galleries as open books, where each exhibition is a chapter. What story are you telling — or unlearning — through Matria?

L.S: I find that an incredibly beautiful and deeply true image.Yes, I do think Matria works somewhat like that: each exhibition is a chapter, each artist a voice that enters into dialogue with the others.

The kind of writing that interests me is not linear — it doesn’t lead from point A to point B — but circular, fragmentary, at times contradictory.

The gallery is my personal anthology of gazes.We are narrating the story of the complexity of contemporary existence, with all its nuances.

But, as you rightly suggest, it is above all an act of unlearning.We are unlearning the haste with which images are consumed in the digital era.We are unlearning neutrality, choosing instead to take a position on issues of gender, identity, and visual sociology.Through Matria, we invite the public to read works slowly, to recognize the stratification of meanings the artist has written through light or gesture.

VS: How do you choose the artists? Is it a matter of urgency, shared vision, or sometimes an inexplicable intuition — a kind of intellectual or emotional coup de founder?

L.S:The selection is an alchemical process, a necessary union of reason and intuition.

There is certainly thematic urgency — the need for a specific dialogue to be initiated now.

There is a foundation of shared vision — the alignment between the artist’s rigor and our curatorial line.

But the most powerful engine is undoubtedly intuition, the “intellectual or emotional coup de foudre.”

It’s that moment when a work or a series imposes itself with such force that you know you must welcome it and show it. It is an act of faith in its potential to trigger a conversion in the gaze of the viewer.

For us, selection is refined by seeking those who are not trying to please, but to pose questions; art as a form of critical thought.

“I wanted a space, both physical and conceptual, where photography and visual arts could be presented with curatorial attention, focused on exploring human fragility.”

VS: Many people today speak of the “art system” as a somewhat saturated ecosystem. Are you trying to create a different microclimate with Matria?

How do you imagine a gallery that can also be a living, relational, permeable organism?

L.S: The expression “saturated ecosystem” perfectly captures the challenge.With Matria, we are trying to reintroduce the dimension of a living and relational organism. Our ambition is not to dominate the system, but to create within it a microclimate where relationship precedes transaction.

This is achieved through permeability: we step out of the classic ivory tower by promoting talks and workshops and opening our doors to interdisciplinary dialogues.We want our space to be an incubator of thought where the public feels invited to participate, not just to admire. I must be able to recognise suspended points, voids, tensions: these are often the moments that contain the most intense truth of art. The curator learns as much as the viewer, because the encounter with a work can reveal something about myself or about my perception of the world that I did

not know.

VS: Is there an artist you have exhibited, or would like to exhibit, who taught you something you had never understood about art — or about yourself? Tell me about that moment.

L.S: Certainly, and I believe this happens with every exhibition. For me, the crucial point is not a single artist, but the constant lesson the curator receives. My work is not limited to selecting works or organizing spaces: it is a balance between structure and openness, between order and mystery. My task is to respect the artist’s intention and to create a space in which the public can fully understand it.

I remember an artist who, despite having a long trajectory, had never seen her works reunited in a spatial configuration capable of amplifying their narrative.When we entered the completed room together, her reaction was intense: tears of wonder and joy. In that moment, I understood how the curator is also an active and human witness, capable of helping the artist grasp the full potential of their own work.

I must be able to recognize suspended points, voids, tensions: these are often the moments that contain the most intense truth of art. The curator learns as much as the viewer, because the encounter with a work can reveal something about myself or about my perception of the world that I did not know. It is the tension between order and chaos, between understanding and mystery, that makes this role so stimulating and vital.

VS:Technology — from video to artificial intelligence — is entering artistic practices in increasingly fluid ways. How do you relate to these languages? Do you think they have already changed the very function of a gallery?

L.S:You know, my approach to Artificial Intelligence is the same one I’ve always had with photography: I see it as a territory to question. I’m deeply intrigued by it, precisely because it forces us to reconsider the foundations of creation and, above all, of creative responsibility.

Art photography — and now AI — does not need to reflect reality; that’s the reporter’s job.Their task is to convey a deeper intention. And this is where AI opens up a series of new questions: the issue is not the truth of the image, but who the creative agent is. And where does conceptual intention end when the image emerges from data?

AI is the latest mutation of visual language; it is part of a long history that runs from the daguerreotype to the pixel. Its impact, however, is not merely technical; it is, above all, conceptual. And this holds true for all technologies that have challenged the truth of the image: from video art — which anticipated manipulation and non-documentary use — to Artificial Intelligence.

This evolution has brought us, in fact, to post-photography: to an image that no longer originates from light imprinted on film or a sensor, but from the manipulation of archives and data.Think about it: just as a camera doesn’t shoot on its own, AI doesn’t create art unless an artist acts as its conceptual director.The algorithm cannot have an intention; the artist can.

This forces us to reconsider everything, especially the relationship between image and credibility. In short, it dismantles our certainties — and it is precisely in this instability that, in my view, art finds its most urgent task.

The real complexity, however, begins now.The challenge is in fact twofold: the artist brings the active, conscious intention. But the dataset on which the AI is trained already contains its own latent intention — a sediment of cultural biases and past styles.

The real complexity, however, begins now.The challenge is in fact twofold: the artist brings the active, conscious intention. But the dataset on which the AI is trained already contains its own latent intention — a sediment of cultural biases and past styles. AI, whether willingly or not, reproduces and amplifies them, and this brings us straight back to the burning issues of copyright and representation.

This interplay — between human intention and algorithmic intention — shows us that every technological revolution, from the birth of photography to the digital era, has always rewritten the status of the image.

Let’s not forget that the ready-made, appropriation, are not novelties in art; they are practices consolidated for over a century!

However, although the principle of reuse is the same, the debate on AI reveals a difference in scale, mechanism, and transparency that, honestly, we cannot ignore. And what about us, as galleries? Well, our function is to create a critical space — physical places where the image, no matter where it comes from,

can be decoded and discussed.The physical space is irreplaceable: it is sensory experience, the place of the body. But the digital allows us to expand experimentation.

Today, we don’t have to choose between the body and the algorithm.We must create a bridge, a critical dialogue.

Ultimately, AI will never replace art — it is questioning it. And that, in itself, is a profoundly artistic gesture.

VS: If Matria were a gesture, what would it be? An embrace? A fracture? A leap into the void? Or something more everyday, like the gesture of preparing tea for a guest?

L.S: I like to think that Matria is a gesture of suspension — an invitation to stop running and to withdraw from the logic of consumption in order to open a different, more porous space-time in which we can return to feeling.

It is not only an individual act but a collective practice: an attempt to move through the fractures of our time and to convert them into possibilities for encounter.

In this sense, Matria gathers the legacy of Georges Braque’s thought — “L’art est une blessure qui devient lumière.” — not as consolation, but as a movement toward the other.

Art becomes a process of empathy and connection, capable of reconstructing meaning and restoring the senses, of giving back to the body and to the gaze their ability to perceive, recognise, touch.

It is a gesture of resistance and care, a place where aesthetic experience becomes a practice of proximity, and where human contact returns to being the raw material of existence.

di Vertigini Studio