Lara Ritosa-Roberts MRSS

Born in Croatia, I have lived and worked in South London since 1994. I obtained an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, UAL in 2007, and a BA Hons in Sculpture from Camberwell College of Arts (2004). I also trained as a physical theatre performer at Ecole de Mime Corporel Dramatique, London (1995 – 1999). In my work I explore the relationship between ideology and the body with the aim of evoking a sense of fractured and displaced identity. Through sculpture, installation, and performance, I hope to provoke the viewing of the body as a cultural and political construct. I often refer to the visual heritage and seminal historical moments of my youth, such as socialist-realist aesthetics, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of communism, and the subsequent war in my homeland. I’m re-appropriating the symbolic language found in the domain of public monuments, mass physical exercises and pageantry, and juxtaposing it with the private and the everyday. The intended outcome is a personal narrative that raises questions around collective experience and individual encounters.