Sciascia demonstrates this knowledge through his consistent and loyal struggle with the challenges of representation and reality.
Filippo Sciascia (b. 1972, Sicily) works across painting, sculpture, photography and installation to examine the long arc of human civilisation - from our earliest images, tools and systems of belief to the technologies shaping contemporary life.
Born in Sicily and based in Bali since the late 1990s, Sciascia draws upon nearly three decades of living between cultural and intellectual worlds. Archaeology, sacred imagery, science, technology and material experimentation converge within a practice that resists distinctions between ancient and contemporary.
For Sciascia, a prehistoric mark, a religious relic, a painting and a digital screen belong to the same evolving human impulse: to understand, represent and transform the world around us.
His work approaches the present as though it were already an archaeological site - searching the remnants of the past for clues about what humanity is becoming.
Beyond his own practice, Sciascia has contributed significantly to Bali’s contemporary art ecology. He founded Gaya Gallery, active from 1998 to 2008, which provided a platform for Balinese and Indonesian artists and fostered exchanges with artists from Yogyakarta including Jumaldi Alfi, Ugo Untoro, S. Teddy Darmawan, Eko Nugroho and Mella Jaarsma, alongside collaborations with Cemeti Art House.
Sciascia studied at the Institute of Art, Nordio, Trieste and the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy. His work has been presented internationally, including at Sarang I, Yogyakarta (2016); National Archaeological Museum of Naples (2013); Castel dell’Ovo, Naples (2012); Langgeng Art Foundation, Yogyakarta (2011); the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); NUS Museum, Singapore (2010); Galleria Poggiali, Italy (2010); and Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur (2009).
More recently, Sciascia participated in a film project by filmmaker and former BBC producer Martin Cooper examining humanity’s relationship with the environment through elemental forces including fire, water and earth. Representing fire, Sciascia extends a concern that has long existed within his practice: how humanity attempts to understand and rationalise nature through science and technology while remaining fundamentally subject to it.
He continues to live and work in Bali.