Keziat | contemporary art solo exhibition | Gallery 502 - Sarasota, Florida
A journey from Puglia to Florida:
Keziat unveils Stelèa at 502 Gallery, Sarasota
The prestigious American gallery showcases the international evolution of the project conceived in Puglia
STELÈA visions beyond time
contemporary art solo
exhibition by KEZIAT
Where
502 Gallery
S. Pineapple Ave. Sarasota, FL 34236
When
From September 3 to 27, 2026
Opening
September 3, 5:00 pm
Hours
Tuesday - Saturday
11AM - 2PM and by appointment
Contact
[email protected]
(941) 254 1660
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Following the success of its debut at the Matteo Sansone National Archaeological Museum in Mattinata, Puglia, Italian artist Keziat presents Stelèa in the United States with a new exhibition at 502 Gallery in Sarasota, Florida. The exhibition marks a new chapter in a project that explores the dialogue between memory, mythology, and contemporary identity.
Through her distinctive ballpoint pen drawings, video installations, and immersive environments, Keziat transforms traces of the past into visionary landscapes where symbols, nature, animals, and everyday objects coexist beyond the boundaries of time. Stelèa becomes a symbolic figure that connects ancient civilizations with the present, inviting viewers to reflect on identity, ritual, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world.
For its American premiere, the artist has created a new body of work and a site-specific installation conceived especially for 502 Gallery, expanding her investigation into collective memory and contemporary visual language.
From Puglia to Florida, Stelèa reaffirms contemporary art as a bridge between cultures, demonstrating how the symbols of the past can inspire new visions and foster intercultural dialogue today.
BIOGRAPHY
Kezia Terracciano, professionally known as Keziat, was born in San Severo, Italy, and is based in Rome. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Foggia in 1998 and has since developed an artistic career that has led her to exhibit in cities around the world, including Venice, Rome, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, Miami, and Johannesburg.
As Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, wrote, “Keziat’s work visualizes worlds that connect different realities and transports us into the hidden depths of the human soul.”
Between 1996 and 2008, her practice focused primarily on painting while she also worked as an illustrator and comic artist for major international publishers, including Encyclopædia Britannica (Chicago), Synergebooks (New York), and 123Publishing House (Hong Kong). Since 2006, she has collaborated with musician and composer Luca Ciarla, developing the multidisciplinary Violipiano Visual projects, in which music, dance, theatre, and visual arts merge into a single expressive language.
In 2009, she launched Visionaria, a project that originated from a series of large-scale ballpoint pen drawings and gradually evolved into animations, video works, and immersive installations. In 2010, her animated short film Memory of a Madman (Memoria di un folle) won the fifth edition of MAGMART – International Video Art Festival, organized in collaboration with the PAN – Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, and later entered the permanent collection of the CAM – Casoria Contemporary Art Museum.
In 2012, Visionaria expanded into an international exhibition project through five solo exhibitions presented at the MAT – Museo dell’Alto Tavoliere in San Severo, the Elsa Morante Cultural Center in Rome, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at New York University, the Sabiana Paoli Art Gallery in Singapore, and the Italian Cultural Institute of Amsterdam.
In 2014, Keziat created the animated logo for the Hollywood film production company Umano. The following year, her work Sounds was acquired by the National Art Gallery of Malaysia after its successful presentation at Art Expo Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.
In 2016, she introduced Hybrids, her second major international exhibition project. First presented at the MAT – Museo dell’Alto Tavoliere in San Severo, the exhibition subsequently traveled to the Società Dante Alighieri in Miami, the Scuderie Aldobrandini in Frascati, and the Chulalongkorn University Museum in Bangkok as part of the Italian Festival in Thailand.
In 2018, she made her Johannesburg debut at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, the interdisciplinary arts center founded by William Kentridge, presenting Music For Your Eyes, the first chapter of her Introspective project. This was followed by a solo exhibition at Via Umbria Gallery in Washington, D.C., curated by Mary J. Sollway, and another solo exhibition at the Kimonos Art Center in Paphos, Cyprus.
In 2019, she presented the exhibition-performance In_Visible at MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, further consolidating a practice increasingly focused on the dialogue between moving image, space, and performance. In the following years, she expanded her work in theatre, designing video scenography for major Italian productions, including L’Asino by Jesper Halle, produced by Teatro del Loto and Metateatro Pescara; Children of Abraham (Figli di Abramo) by Svein Tindberg; and The Game, written and directed by Gianluca Iumiento for the Teatro Nuovo di Pisa.
In 2025, Keziat inaugurated Stelèa, her most recent artistic project, at the Matteo Sansone Civic Archaeological Museum in Mattinata, as part of an initiative promoted by the Regional Directorate of the National Museums of Puglia, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Culture and Musei Italiani. The project continues its international journey with exhibitions scheduled in the United States in 2026 and Asia in 2027.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Dwelling on the memories of the past—silent guardians of history, identity, and knowledge—I have embarked on a dialogue with the present and with what is yet to come. Within these traces, I recognized the essence of a deeply visionary humanity, one capable of living in harmony with nature and of perceiving itself as part of a single living organism. It is this vision that I seek to convey through my work, where animal and vegetal forms inhabit and move through human spaces, dissolving the boundaries between culture and nature, myth and reality. Memory thus becomes a generative force, an impulse that invites us to delve within ourselves, transforming the past into an ongoing search for meaning—one that illuminates the present and opens new possibilities for the future.
www.keziat.net
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Organization
GALLERY 502
ASS. CULT. ADRI|ART
VIOLIPIANO VISUAL