I’M HERE – with Christine Malvasi, NYU Florence. Language Lecturer, Expository Writing Program, NYU, and Visiting Faculty Fellow, Global Research Institute, NYU Florence.
In this reading and performance, I’ll feature my own poetry and music in response to works of visual art. In considering images in the Acton Collection, among others, I’ll engage with questions regarding the representation of women, the presence and absence of home and safety, and patterns of voicelessness. In addition to sharing original works, I’ll discuss the process behind making them and explore the notion of “translating” a work of art from one artistic form or historical context to another. In sharing these “translations,” I’ll experiment with the idea of how to read an image creatively and actively as well as how that process might help us recover the power of our own voices.
Women and Photography – with photographer Alessandra Capodacqua, NYU Florence.
This talk will revolve around the large presence of photographs of women in the Acton Photo Archive and how these photographs are not only reproductions of the persons represented in them, but also convey intriguing information about the period, fashion, and different styles and influences. Photographs are also three-dimensional material objects and, as such, are subject to the process of wear and tear, which adds another
interesting level of interpretation. Photographs travel flawlessly across social, political, cultural and historical contexts and transmit captivating facts and sub-texts related to different time periods.
Part of the Picturing Women Series.
Followed by:
February 21 at 12:30 pm – Villa La Pietra
Workshop with Alessandra Capodacqua (Opened to NYU Students only).
This workshop will present new strategies on how to use historical and family archives to produce contemporary bodies of work, as well as the phenomenon of appropriation in art. We will question notions of authorship, originality, and authenticity
Featured Biographies

Alessandra Capodacqua
PHOTOGRAPHER
Alessandra Capodacqua is a photographer, a teacher of photography, and a curator of exhibitions. She teaches photography at New York University, Studio Arts College International, IED and Fondazione Studio Marangoni. She has curated various exhibitions of photography and participated in the creation of festivals of photography in Italy and abroad. Her photographs are in private and public collections, including the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.

Christine Malvasi
POET
Christine Malvasi graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University and earned her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, where she is currently on faculty in the Expository Writing Department. She has received NYU’s Willy Gorrissen Award for Excellence in Teaching, and grants and residencies from Poets & Writers, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Princeton-in-Asia Program in Singapore, among others. She is the editor of Challenges for the Delusional, an anthology of writing exercises and the poems they inspired. A graduate of the William Esper Studio Meisner Conservatory Program, she is also an actor and musician.
At the beginning of 2017, she served as Visiting Faculty Fellow at NYU Florence through the Global Research Institute.