The Untitled Space is pleased to present the debut U.S. solo exhibition of Italian photographic artist Giulia Grillo aka Petite Doll, opening on November 4th and on view through November 19th, 2022.

Curated by Indira Cesarine, the self-titled exhibition showcases a range of artworks that highlight the artist’s surreal performance-based photography. A number of works from Grillo’s ongoing series The Crab Girl will premiere in the exhibition, as well as a selection from her latest mixed-media project, In the Name of Perpetual Connection.

In this interview, Giulia talks about her attraction to the “push and pull between eye-candy and grotesque,” the dark realities hiding behind the tech which permeates our lives, and the important sense of materiality presented by her use of practical effects instead of digital.

Interview by Interlocutor Magazine

Why do you consider your human-crustacean hybrid, “The Girl with Lobster Hands,” (featured in your series The Crab Girl), as your “most representative character”? What is it about this persona in particular that you think serves as a resilient foundation for the other manifestations of "Petite Doll”?

I’m very affectionate to The Crab Girl character as it was one of my first surrealist projects, if not the very first. It was a significant turning point for the development of my visual language. A cathartic moment when I realized the path I wanted to follow. The Crab Girl is a celebration of beauty against conventions, and it is from her that I found inspiration for all my subsequent characters.

Your creations deftly combine projections of allure/beauty with the grotesque/uncanny - what sorts of assumptions do you aim to challenge with your audience, and what types of questions would you like to prompt with your work?

My work is open to many possibilities of interpretation, but my main aim is to invite the viewer to face their inner fears and desires, in a sort of push and pull between eye-candy and grotesque. I’ve always been fascinated in the tension between opposites, I believe they create a powerful energy able to reveal hidden insights. My images can provoke different responses in each person based on what associations their mind does. I think this is the most interesting aspect of surrealism.

Your latest mixed-media project, In the Name of Perpetual Connection, focuses on the negative impacts of contemporary technology in our society, often showing tech combining with the human body in unnerving ways. Some people view biometrics, transhumanism, and the metaverse as a positive transformative evolution - do you think these more utopian views of tech are ultimately misguided?

Technology has done so many incredible things, creating amazing tools and resources. I’m not against technological progress. But I have an interest towards the impact of technology from a psychological and sociological point of view. It’s not really science itself I am interested in, as much as how it impacts us as humans.

Nowadays technology is almost invisible to us, and we tend to forget about its constant presence. I like to create these dystopian scenarios where everything looks like a perfect mise-en-scène and yet you feel a darker reality is hiding behind it. I think it’s also a way for me to experience my inner fears because, at times, the line between real and fictional is frighteningly thin.

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A wonderful element of your work is your use of intricate practical effects instead of anything CGI. How do you think the highly baroque, “handmade” quality of your creations helps to bolster your overall artistic themes?

I always say that real things give a sense of materiality which in my opinion it’s quite hard to achieve digitally. When I actually started to study photography, I experimented a lot with photo manipulation, and I was quite good with Photoshop. But I’ve never been really satisfied with the results, and I always felt like I was “cheating”. Like when you realize the fictitious nature of the image and say, “Oh, it’s Photoshop!” So I had this idea to start to create everything by myself - I’ve always had this creative and versatile spirit and even if I’m not a sculptor or a makeup artist I like to experiment with everything.

I think using practical elements instead of anything digital adds another level of reading into the image - a surreal world made of real things. And it eventually became one of the most important stages of my creative process.