Born in Bologna, 1980 Francesca Pasquali studied design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, where she graduated in 2006.

Her research stems from the observation of natural shapes whose structural texture the artists emulates, transforming plastic, industrial materials into complex and elaborate objects and installations. Her artistic approach spans in the direction of an engaging relationship between organic and inorganic, nature and culture, recycle of materials and their aesthetic redefinition. The relationship between nature and artifice lies at the heart of her work, which, together with her unwillingness to categorize objects, produces works that challenge the viewer’s perceptions – from hard to soft, from alien to familiar. The materials invite the viewer to touch and interact with the works, thinking again about the beauty to be found in the every-day elements.

Another crucial aspect concerns the relations of her works with the environments and architectural spaces that often define and change the making of the works. Several cycles emerge in Pasquali’s work, recognisable by their titles that often refer to the materials used, like for the Straws series. Cut to different lengths, innumerable plastic straws are attached to wooden panels – or more recently to mirror-polished plexiglas – to create vibrating surfaces.

With the Frappe cycle, Pasquali experiments with neoprene, assembling layers of the material into spirals which are then mounted onto wooden panels or metal nets.

Works from the Setole series are made with plastic broom bristles assembled into wooden containers and arranged to form a soft and compact surface.

More recently, the artist has been experimenting with long plastic bristles, in particular with the site-specific installation “Francesca Pasquali for Salvatore Ferragamo” travelling between Milan, London and Paris in 2016. New technologies are an integral part of the artist’s practice, which includes sound, light and video installations like the recent Glasswall (2015), a kinetic and interactive work realised in collaboration with Mary Bauermeister for the Fluxus exhibition at C.U.BO. Centro Unipol in Bologna. In 2013 alongside several Italian artists and curator Ilaria Bignotti, Francesca Pasquali founded the artistic and cultural movement “Resilienza italiana”, aiming to further the international debate around sculpture among the contemporary and emerging generations of artists.

A finalist of the Cairo Prize 2015 and Second Prize at the Henraux Foundation Prize in 2014, Francesca Pasquali has also been invited to participate in several major international art fairs such as Art Basel in Miami and Hong Kong, FIAC in Paris, TEFAF in Maastricht. Her works are housed in important private collections and several public institutions around Italy.

Francesca Pasquali also has an international grip that allowed her to show her work in exhibitions all over the world, such as “Francesca Pasquali. Plastic Islands” hosted in 2018 at the Sydney Opera House and “Francesca Pasquali” at the Leila Heller Gallery in New York in 2016.

Furthermore, in 2020 the artist will create a site-specific environmental installation for an exhibition held by the Richter Collection in Zagreb, which will dialogue with the works of Gerhard Richter and Paolo Scheggi. In December 2015, the Francesca Pasquali Archive, was founded with the help of Ilaria Bignotti as scientific coordinator, in order to archive, preserve and promote the artist’s works through different projects with public and private institutions, as well as to present her research through innovative systems of communication.