Biography

Marisa Tesauro is an Italian artist based in Turin. Born in 1976 near Detroit, she grew up between the ruins of American industry and shuttered shopping malls on one side, and amongst the centuries of layered ruins in Italy on the other. The stark contrasts and the uncanny likenesses between the ancient and the industrial play an important role in her work. Working across sculpture, drawing and installation, her practice combines a material rigor in the spirit of Arte Povera with a constant search for new methods of making, pushing materials and techniques beyond their conventional uses.

Tesauro's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally including La Specola museum, Florence, Queens Museum of Art, New York, the Bronx Museum of Art, New York, Eyebeam Gallery, New York, La Escocesa, Barcelona, Stand4 Gallery, New York, Martina Simeti, Milan, Project:ARTspace, New York, Andrew Edlin Gallery, Westbeth Gallery, New York and RUTHANN, New York amongst others.

Tesauro's site-specific installations include Hunter's Point South, New York, Monasterace Superiore, Italy, Old American Can Factory, New York, Bay Ridge Saw, New York and No Longer Empty at the Andrew Freedman Home, New York. She has published two artist books, Strutture with Content Series and Relics in the Construction of Place. Tesauro collaborates with archeologists working in the Magna Grecia area of Italy and gives lectures on her work within the archeology field.

A recipient of an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Emergency Grant, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant Emergency Grant and the Yvonne Force Award amongst others. Formerly an artist in the Artist Pension Trust, she has been an artist in residence at the Queens Museum Studio in the Park, Bronx Museum of Arts: AIM program and received a full-fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. Tesauro received her BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001.