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Andrea Anastasio
Artist-in-Residence
Artist, designer, philosopher, and writer, Andrea Anastasio came to the Gardner Museum in 2004 both as an Artist-in-Residence and as a collaborator in the Chairs exhibition, a multidisciplinary project that brought together an artist, a furniture historian, a designer, an educator, and a filmmaker to work with three of the Gardner's curators. Anastasio, who was a member of the Memphis group, a loose collective of Italian designers, spent his residency doing research on Isabella Stewart Gardner's aesthetics and anthropological aspects of the chair. He later gave an Eye of the Beholder lecture titled Standing Between the Earth and Sky, in which he discussed the cultural, economic, and political aspects of the chair as well as its role in domestic, work, religious, artistic, and literary environments.
As a Chairs exhibition collaborator, Anastasio helped 2002 Artist-in-Residence Dayanita Singh install her photography exhibition and created Amnesia, an installation in which he transformed Singh's photographs by projecting them onto the back of a chair from the Museum’s collection.
His travels have allowed him to return to the Gardner for short stays. In November 2008, Anastasio was invited by Artist-in-Residence Joan Jonas to participate in the second reiteration of Reading Dante, a live reading and video performance held during Gardner After Hours. Filmed excerpts from this performance were incorporated into Jonas's Reading Dante video piece, which was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2009.
Andrea Anastasio is an artist, designer, philosopher, and writer. Armed with a degree in philosophy from the University of Venice, Anastasio joined the Memphis group, a team of Italian designers who became famous in the 1980s for their unconventional use of shapes, colors, textures, and patterns. Between 1989 and 2002, Anastasio worked on designing everyday objects made of high-tech materials originally intended for use in manufacturing and/or construction. In 2002, Anastasio began devoting more time to his art practice; Fingerprint (2009), for instance, is a visual fable that celebrates resistance to state surveillance and control. Recently, he was awarded Interior Design Magazine’s 2017 Best Light Design, as well as a USA Interior Design Award for Best Table Lamp of the Year. Anastasio's work appears in many permanent collections, and has been exhibited at Gallery SKE, Bangalore; Laure Genliard, London; La Triennale de Milano, Milan; Alessandra Bonomo Gallery, London; and Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome. He lives between Naples, Italy and Mumbai, India.