Victoria DeBlassie was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and she works between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Florence, Italy. Like an ethnoarchaeologist, Victoria mines her immediate surroundings to discover material remains and detritus and what these findings say about contemporary life, cultural values, and their relationship to history. She recontextualizes discarded objects and materials to create art that suggests the excessiveness of material culture as well as change and development over time. Using the refuse’s innate history, form, and function as a point of departure, she applies various craft processes to reformulate the acquired matter’s identity. Because pieces of contemporary culture—useful within society at a particular moment—decrease in value because they become useless, scrap, overused, out of fashion or out-dated, it is vital to accentuate the cultural and ecological value of the hand-made and creative reuse of materials in the manner in which she’s currently engaged—by collecting trash, by searching through our ever-amassing mass to unearth and create a novel kind of vitality.
After receiving her BFA from the University of New Mexico in 2009 and MFA at the California College of the Arts in 2011, DeBlassie was awarded a Fulbright grant to Italy as well as a Berlin Fulbright Seminar Travel grant to further her artistic research.
Victoria has participated in numerous residencies in the USA as well as Europe including but not limited to, F.AIR Florence Artist in Residence (IT), DE LICEIRAS 18, (PT), Atelier Real (PT), Lakkos AIR, Heraklion (GR), Apulia Land Art Festival and Residency (IT), and Hangar.org (SP).
Recent solo exhibitions include Cascade at Cartavetra (IT), Plasticaia at the Villa Romana (IT), Afterimage, Srisa Project Space, Firenze, (IT), and Lakkos, Lakkos Neighborhood (GR). Her latest group selected shows include, Ecosistemi, Fondazione Biagiotti Progetto Arte (IT), Oltre il Giardino, Giardino di Buoniamici (IT), Mappings, Numeroventi, (IT) as well as a two-woman show Interpretation of a Seed at Le Murate PAC (IT).