Delicia Sampero 

Sampero is a critically acclaimed New Zealand artist. She specializes in traffic signs as her artistic medium for creating paintings and installations. Recently she finished a Master of Cultural and Creative Practice (Hons) at the Auckland University of Technology around her philosophical research and multidisciplinary arts practice. The artist has exhibited in Europe and extensively in Oceania in public institutions and private galleries. Both as person and artist she radiates a certain energy and curiosity. During conversations you soon notice that the person is so inextricably linked to her body of work and without knowing it, you find yourself in a new, always questioning, more groundbreaking dimension of (personal) research into multiculturalism, globalism and urbanism. If we would describe Delicia in 3 words we would go for the following: respect, awe and critical. 

 

Her extra-material and conceptual artworks, consisting out of transformed traffic signs, reflective paintings, digital manifesto’s, sculptural birds, moving performances, are so thought-provoking that upon gazing nothing seems what it seems to be anymore.  Apart from starting a war with the mind of the viewer, the artworks mostly evoke a sense of physical, spiritual, emotional and digital way finding.  Instead of obstructing us, they spark our imagination while inviting us to phenomenological issues: to approach this sign and to compare it with other sign’s, repurposed and reimagined. In life, signs matter, all the time. They have a universal power: they structure the world and give information. But they also awaken something anarchistic, usually deeply hidden, within us. What if If stop sign is no longer a stop sign but an object open to interpretation? Does it lose its power or does it absorb the information of the zeitgeist?  Or are we beginning to understand the hidden graphic language? 

 

Just before the Corona-pandemic broke out, Delicia added her mark to the outside of our mobile gallery. Here the temporary sign is juxtaposed with stylized birds (alluding to her “Conference of the birds”series ) smoothing out the “temporary” sign ceremoniously. Prophetically the coming together of two of her artworks were given a whole new meaning and make passing spectators think about the world we lived in and where we want to go. Literally, this is a temporary halt to globalisation, to the ins and outs of a world slowly disintegrating. The installation inspires us and invites people to to take a fresh look at their surroundings and to contemplate the relationships of roads, city, people, nature and life in general. But the best part is that at night, depending on the phase of the moon, the artwork shines a light upon us. The works’ importance and meaning are thus in continuous flux