Linda Pagani

A series of monotypes created from the debris of burnt personal journals. Ashes provided material evidence of emotions inscribed into paper - intimate thoughts captured in ink, transformed by flame into the remains of a powerful past. What was once permanent becomes ephemeral, carrying a haunting tenderness, a release, with memory turning to dust, surrendered but never quite forgotten. Fleeting, yet deeply felt, the ashes linger as a quiet testimony to what once was.

Suspended between movement and stillness

beauty lingers.

With its radiance fading gently, quietly,

into the hush of the inevitable.

These monotypes were infused with Mica powder, a naturally occurring mineral dust used in cosmetics for its light-reflecting properties, creating shimmer and shine. Mica's reflective properties contribute to a smooth, radiant, and luminous look. The series captures the breath between the glow of life just before the the whisper of what’s slipping away. It is a moment suspended—achingly beautiful, unbearably brief—where everything gleams with the weight of goodbye, a commentary on the fixation on youth and beauty for women.

ADORN is an exploration of the lure and seduction of marriage and motherhood. It interrogates the weight of tradition and the intimacy of ritual through the lens of ornamentation. Jewelry—once a symbol of status, commitment, and femininity—is deconstructed, removed from the female body, and reimagined within space. In this act of displacement, adornment becomes architectural, reflective, and spectral—a haunting echo of roles both embraced and imposed. The work invites viewers to consider how beauty, value, and identity are worn, inherited, and ultimately transformed.

Garden of Eve was first exhibited in paper in 2020 as part of a solo exhibition, woven female landscape. Female participants contributed to the assemblage of a large wall installation of 3,000 pieces, placing a lens on the collective female experience. The body of work draws attention to the challenges contemporary women face in constructing a present-day definition of ‘womanhood’ and the complex relationship between feminine and female identity. The fleeting beauty of the flower is preserved in this body of work through the use of more permanent materials including enameled copper and porcelain.

Tradition, domesticity, and sensuality of the female form are portrayed in a wall installation and photographs of sculptures made of cloth, at once threadbare and luminous. The organic shapes reference the cultural history of being female, with beauty, purity, and ‘women’s work’ at the center. The perpetual story of the female condition is told through the white, woven shroud, chronicling topics from submission to solidarity, and making up the woven female landscape.

dissolving / re-emerging is a self-reflection, both visual and spiritual. It portrays the female figure in a state of flux—fading, blurring, and then returning—as a metaphor for the profound transformation of identity that accompanies motherhood. This ebb and flow captures the tension between loss and becoming, invisibility and presence. Through soft transitions and fragmented forms, the work reflects the internal negotiation of self, where past and present selves intertwine, dissolve, and reassemble into something newly whole yet forever altered.

rise reflects on the cyclical rhythm of the sun—its rising and setting light—and the way it transforms the architecture of the everyday, particularly the humble stair. Light becomes both guide and illusion, shifting shadows and shaping perception. The stair, often overlooked, becomes a site of contemplation: is it a path upward or downward? Progress or retreat? By juxtaposing ascent with descent, and light with darkness, rise invites viewers to question their assumptions about movement, direction, and the quiet power of transitional spaces.

The photographs in the presence series result from a public performance calling women to join body and voice in a shared experience. Dressed in white, female protagonists walk through mist, quietly humming, intersecting each other’s paths. White attire references historical societal expectations for female purity in conflict  with aspirations and hope for a new order.  Collective humming becomes the acoustic symbol of female unity, victorious through a common voice, unheard though present, in these photographs.  

The imagery takes the viewer from the invisible to a presence, or a quiet force, as women shift the contemporary social construct of gender inequality. As a narrative unfolds, we witness searching, discovery, ascension, and triumph. Through this photographic essay, we experience time suspended, linking our present female story to that of our history, giving rise to our future.

* credits: fogxflo: Fujiko Nakaya; video footage: Yu-Wen Wu and Meg Bergstand

looking is about seeking out the invisible—searching for what hides just beyond the reach of the naked eye. Rooted in curiosity as a spirit of inquiry, the work challenges us to notice the unnoticed, to find presence in absence. Taken aboard a sailboat adrift in the vastness of open ocean waters, these photographs were captured using binoculars and a phone camera, tools that extend vision and perception. Each image becomes a quiet act of discovery, revealing fragments of distant realities and moments that might otherwise dissolve into the horizon.

The two-dimensional plane is transformed by the simple, intentional act of a tear in a sheet of paper. What was once flat and contained is now opened—pierced by light, depth, and possibility. Through this rupture, a landscape emerges: delicate, raw, and suggestive of something beyond. The tear becomes both a wound and a window, blurring the line between destruction and creation. Light seeps through the break, revealing form and shadow, inviting the viewer to look not just at the surface, but through it—into a space newly imagined.

emptiness is a photographic series that began as an inquiry into the effects of nature on human experience. Initially focused on capturing the subtle interplay between landscape and emotion, the project evolved through a process of experimentation with overexposed film. The resulting images, stripped of detail and clarity, offer minimal visual information—yet in their absence, they invite presence. What remains is a space for reflection, where emotion is not directed but discovered. The lack of form becomes a language of its own, allowing the viewer to project, interpret, and feel the intangible impressions left by the environment.

In the sometime series, the viewer is transported to a place suspended between memory and imagination—a landscape that may have existed long before us, or one that awaits in a time yet to come. The images blur temporal boundaries, evoking a sense of the eternal. Through subtle textures, muted tones, and ambiguous forms, sometime invites contemplation of what is timeless and transient, familiar yet unknown. It is a meditation on place as both anchor and illusion, where the past and future quietly converge.

Approaching Zero seeks the minimum threshold of perceptible change—subtle shifts in tones of white space that challenge the viewer’s perception. The series explores how near-invisible variations in color and form interact with architecture and light, creating a quiet tension between presence and absence. By pushing toward the edge of visibility, Approaching Zero invites a slowed way of seeing, where convergence becomes an experience of stillness, nuance, and precision. It is an inquiry into the immaterial—where light defines space, and space reveals the poetry of near-nothingness.

Within an interior space void of its inhabitants, a profound stillness settles. Without the presence of people, the architecture breathes in silence, allowing light to move freely—uninterrupted, unobserved. Shadows stretch and soften across surfaces, revealing the quiet beauty of overlooked corners and unnoticed angles. In this solitude, the space speaks in subtle shifts, uncovering the invisible narratives that unfold when nothing and no one interrupts the rhythm of light and form.