© michela frungillo art web site
My name is Michela. I am an Italian artist and art therapist, based between Naples and Ferrara, with a BA in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples and an MA in Art Therapy from the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome.
My painting practice revolves around the iconography of underground systems and urban landscapes, which I use to explore contemporary life and the relationships individuals form with their environment. Central to my work are the concepts of waiting, time, and observation—those quiet, suspended moments often overlooked in the rush of modern life.
Through paintings marked by energetic, sometimes chaotic gestures and muted palettes punctuated by small vivid accents, I seek to capture the grey, compressed and complicated atmosphere of metropolitan reality.
My work is not merely a reflection of the urban flow, but an invitation to pause, reclaim personal time and space, and observe one’s surroundings—resisting the speed and chaos of the systems we inhabit. Dripping has become a key expressive element in my recent works, contributing to a vision of reality that is lived, mutable, fragile, and compelling.
The imagery in my paintings often carries autobiographical traces. Over a decade of commuting has immersed me in the metropolitan landscape for long hours each day, teaching me balance, stillness, and a heightened capacity for observation—tools I now bring into my practice as an art therapist.
I am also drawn to the passage of time and lived experience, often painting frames from my own life or those of others—capturing fleeting moments as if they were stills from a video, frozen to be observed, felt, and reflected upon.
In 2022, I completed my BA thesis, “Art and Society in the Post-Technological Era: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Art and Society and the Search for New Approaches to an Educational and Socially Engaged Artistic Practice.”
Between 2022 and 2025, I took part in several exhibitions, including a solo show in Campania, Italy. In 2024, I spent six months at the Bauhaus University in Germany, an experience that deeply shaped me both as an artist and as a person, and that concluded with a group exhibition where I had my own space to present seven paintings from a series based on video frames. I have always believed that artists carry a responsibility toward society: to transmit art to future generations in ways that are human, sensitive, and socially meaningful, rather than purely commercial.
I work with children and teenagers, drawing on my own experience of the transformative power of art. I am also open to collaboration with galleries or agents interested in representing my work.
