Workshop with Lika Nüssli
Thanks to the valuable support from the Otto per Mille funds of the Soka Gakkai Italian Buddhist Institute, through the call for proposals "Support and Promotion of Young Artists' Artistic Expression," the 2025 edition of A Occhi aperti (With Open Eyes) gives center stage to artists under 35.
From November 17th to 19th, Lika Nüssli will lead Visual Poetry, an intensive workshop at URCA Studio, together with a group of young artists from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Through a series of exercises and experiments, the group will be invited to tell stories based on real or fictional experiences, conducting research and interviews, and looking at and reading other comics for inspiration.
The workshop's goal is to encourage observation and reflection on the world around us in order to convey it in a new and constantly evolving form that is in dialogue with the reader.
For Nüssli, drawing is a declaration, it is taking a political stance, addressing and making our personal stories tangible. Through a process of continuous associative reaction to what emerges from the drawing, the artists are guided towards an activity of autonomous creation, free from pre- established narrative rules.
The workshop concludes with a group exhibition of the works created in the spaces of URCA Studio.
Lika Nüssli was born in Flawil in 1973 and grew up in the town of Gossau in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. She studied textile design and then illustration at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. Since 2003, she has worked as a freelance artist in the fields of drawing and painting, performance, and installation, and since 2017, she has invited people to draw with her at the Kunstmuseum of St. Gallen. Nüssli has received several awards for her work, including the Comicstipendium der Deutschschweizer Städte in 2016, the Comic-Werkbeitrag from Pro Helvetia in 2021, and the Swiss Literature Prize in 2023 for Starkes Ding.
From November 17th to 19th, Lika Nüssli will lead Visual Poetry, an intensive workshop at URCA Studio, together with a group of young artists from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Through a series of exercises and experiments, the group will be invited to tell stories based on real or fictional experiences, conducting research and interviews, and looking at and reading other comics for inspiration.
The workshop's goal is to encourage observation and reflection on the world around us in order to convey it in a new and constantly evolving form that is in dialogue with the reader.
For Nüssli, drawing is a declaration, it is taking a political stance, addressing and making our personal stories tangible. Through a process of continuous associative reaction to what emerges from the drawing, the artists are guided towards an activity of autonomous creation, free from pre- established narrative rules.
The workshop concludes with a group exhibition of the works created in the spaces of URCA Studio.
Lika Nüssli was born in Flawil in 1973 and grew up in the town of Gossau in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. She studied textile design and then illustration at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. Since 2003, she has worked as a freelance artist in the fields of drawing and painting, performance, and installation, and since 2017, she has invited people to draw with her at the Kunstmuseum of St. Gallen. Nüssli has received several awards for her work, including the Comicstipendium der Deutschschweizer Städte in 2016, the Comic-Werkbeitrag from Pro Helvetia in 2021, and the Swiss Literature Prize in 2023 for Starkes Ding.
