Creating a Magical Reality
Stefania Nazzal (°1976) is a Swiss artist who lives and works in Dubai.
Nazzal trained at the Cyprus Academy of Art and Central Saint Martins in London. Through a meticulous mixed-media process, she explores how light disperses through space — creating compositions that feel both intuitive and paradoxical.
In a deeply layered artistic process, Nazzal carefully selects each element and every nuanced shift as a means to dissect colors: both the colors we see in nature and those that remain hidden.
Her works utilize a rich palette of recycled PVC threads, balancing between solidity and fluidity. She has transformed these materials — typically used in more malleable forms like friendship bracelets and keychains — into sculptural streams that flow like thoughts.
“A perfect curve, bending beyond the sky, with no end in sight… Fables tell of treasures awaiting true believers. A spectrum of colours, brilliant hues bringing me joy and delight, Slowly fading into a haze of light. Magical to its core, into a world of fantasy and colourful imagination…”
“Somewhere” by Stefania Nazzal
“Creating a Magical Reality”
“For me, art is profoundly influenced by the natural world. Nature's generous forces have always carried and taken me, offering a spark of hope and a sense of magic during difficult times. I began my artistic practice focusing on natural light as a spectrum, exploring how color transitions can offer a glimpse of the sublime.
My sculptures and reliefs are labor-intensive and meditative. By bending shapes and colors, I work with materiality in both its perfection and its distortion, moving away from two-dimensional formats. Manipulating sightlines through varying shades, I create movement. In my work, the sculptural solidity of thousands of juxtaposed threads becomes an expressive gesture of time and light.
My work is an attempt to give form to fleeting moments: the sunset, the flicker of an idea, a playful light. I work with hard, industrial materials to approach these experiences — experiences that cannot be held. I want to evoke the feeling that no two moments are ever the same when you are fully present with all the small shifts unfolding in time.”