We were lucky to catch up with Sara Cuce recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sara, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I’ve been working for the last 10 years on a visual diary focusing on the theme of home and belonging. This project was very meaningful to me as I’ve moved away from home in Sicily (Italy) to London about 12 years ago and this project helped me processing the mixed feeling of living away from the place where you were born. I was feeling lonely and free at the same time, and also sad as I was missing home but full of hopes and opportunities for my future. I was often questioning if I was doing the right thing while I was struggling to build a new life in a new place. Taking photographs and spending time in darkroom to process, edit and print them, allowed me to understand and express that bittersweet feeling and in time, making me feel at ease in my new home. The project is titled ‘Memory of the eyes’, as it recollects all the instants, the memories, the nostalgia, the reality of the new life as I was seeing it and living it , looking at this new place with fresh eyes, and much more.

Sara, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a visual artist working with analog photography and processes. I was born in Sicily and moved to London in 2013 as I really wanted to study photography and I was sure that London would have inspired me and given me more opportunities to thrive as an artist. I graduated from a BA in Photography in 2017, and during the BA I found a photographic process and style that really helped me processing my ideas and visually putting them on photographic paper. I started experimenting in darkroom and only taking photographs with black and white film. I loved experimenting with double exposures and printing with different chemicals and paper types to achieve a very contrasted black and white. Throughout the years, I started sharing my works on social media and printing them in photo zines as I wanted to share them with as many people as possible. A really good way for me has been participating to photography competition, and online portfolio reviews. This was a game changer as it gave me a sense of how to select and present the work, how to accept feedbacks and in time, it helped me improving my projects and the ideas I wanted to convey.

In time was winner and/or shortlisted in great photography competition such as Lensuculture photo prize, Magnum awards the royal photographic society, life framer and few more. These were great opportunities to print and exhibit my works in group exhibition all around Europe, in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Milan, Rotterdam. It also connected my with fellow artists and introduced me to a completely new world. I started printing limited edition of my works and selling photographic prints, and it was incredibly moving as it was an unexpected outcome. I started taking photographs as a way to understand myself and the world around me, and as a need and urgency of introspection and elaborating what was in my head, so I wasn’t expecting to find someone who could relate to my works and be moved or inspired by them, it was truly amazing for me.

Finally, I haven’t made of this a full time job (unfortunately) and I kept on studying in a MA course in Curating Art. After practising as an assistant curator in a public gallery, I now specialised in logistics and started working as gallery registrar.
The full time job takes a lot of my mental space and time but I keep working on photography and my project as this is really what gives value to my time, it allows me to connect to myself on a deeper level and with the people around me and I feel it gives something to the people that observe and receive my works, and in times like this, this means everything to me.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I believe that being an artist means many things, but for me is observing, reflecting, interiorising and connecting with what is around us. Feeling the energies, go deeper, explore things that you can’t see and translate this visions in words and images. Sometimes I feel connected with everything surrounding me, even though I don’t know the places or the peoples or the history of that place and I want to explore this connection on a deeper meaning and in a way, expressing it through photographs can help other people giving words and structure to their thoughts and feelings too. I think this is a powerful way of feeling how everything is connected and for me is very rewarding to see how other people were moved or inspired by it. In times like these, it’s great to feel ‘touched’ by something you watch or listen to and I always hope it can create more meanings and outputs in other people’s lives in many levels.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

This opinion is very much connected to my life in a city like London probably – but I feel society could do so much more to help creatives and to help building thriving creative ecosystem. Few of the many things that comes up in my mind:

– affordable rents for artists – or discounted rents.

– offering free studio rent in abandoned buildings (as it’s proved that artists can create incredibly powerful and thriving places out of it)

– now the majority of art/photography competition are paid entry, which is really unfair as artists shouldn’t pay to participate to a competition.. so it would be good to have free entry

I feel there will be many more examples but this looks like the beginning of a long list… in general living in a city where the cost of living is super high and you spend 80% of your week working in a demanding full time job just to pay rent +life… it looks impossible to be an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.saracuce.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sara_cuce/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cucesara
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-cuc%C3%A8-716528104/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csSJiGJWKxA

Image Credits
@Sara Cuce