Matilde Sambo: Depth, Transformation, and the Poetics of Presence

Matilde Sambo (Venice, 1993), a graduate in Visual Arts from IUAV University of Venice, works across sculpture, video, sound, and performance. She has participated in residencies including VIR (Milan), Fonderia Artistica Battaglia (Milan), BoCs Art (Cosenza), Collective Signatures (Balearic Islands), Tagli (Stromboli), New Echo System / Pro Helvetia (Venice), Art Encounters at Volvo Studio (Milan), Festival Angelica (Bologna), Pasinger Fabrik (Munich), Argo 16 (Venice), and Radio Raheem (Milan). In an interview with Davide Dal Sasso, Sambo discusses her focus on presence over absence, working slowly to capture multiple viewpoints, and the importance of repositioning elements. She describes her process as layered sedimentation, with a recent turn toward subtraction—removing material to concentrate on the essential. Her work "Vita come saliente avidità" (2021) uses lost-wax bronze casting to preserve traces of struggle, with the final act being the possibility of wearing the armor-like sculptures. Sambo explores depth not as darkness but as a way to see in the dark, inspired by caves in the Balearic Islands and reflections on sirens at Stromboli. She seeks equilibrium between intention and material dialogue, accepting unpredictability while maintaining direction. Her practice is characterized by a "poetics of repair," recognizing intermediate phases of descent and renewing perception to find light in semi-darkness.