Shikanu' is my stage name, different from my real name (Antonella Meloni Corsini), not because I wish to deny my parents' choices or my origins, but because Shikanu' is the name a little girl called me when I was four years old, inviting me to transfer onto a sheet of paper the glimmers of light that peeked out from the shadows of my mind, thus giving me the opportunity to experiment with a new way of expressing myself that wasn't solely verbal.

 

My name is pronounced with an accent but is written with an apostrophe to emphasize that it doesn't fit the orthography of any existing language. Perhaps it's a figment of my imagination or my desire for a less common name, as my mother suggested when I told her about the little girl who first named me that name.

 

I was and am someone who talks a lot and quickly, but I often found people who argued about other people's lives with venomous tongues, while it was a rare pearl to find someone like me who wanted to engage with the profound questions of life. Therefore, I found it easier to draw others toward my own inclinations, capturing their attention through the prodding of images.

 

I am a person who sleeps little and dreams a lot, and inside me, it's a constant shuffling between light and shadow, where I try to maintain balance between the parts because I believe that no light can arouse such wonder if there isn't a shadow to highlight it. I grasp, propose, and set aside ideas with a sense of uneasiness, knowing that life won't be enough for me to express them all.

 

Edith Wharton said that "there are two ways to spread light: to be the candle or to be the mirror that reflects it."

 

With all the humility of someone who knows they can't be a light, and probably not even a mirror, my intention is to at least be a spur for others to approach the darkness of my abysses and glimpse the twilights that lie hidden within.

 

With highly unlikely lights, as when the figures are illuminated by the sun but always placed in completely dark environments, so that the viewer perceives the sensation of unresolved meaning and at the same time focuses on the meaning of the message I intend to communicate... thus I scream my inner voice.

 

This is what my paintings want to be: windows that look inside me but with panoramas that speak of each of us.

 

Shikanu'