claudi tola



selected works


Untitled (broken signals)
Sorry, no image (Placeholders)
nighshift
A shadow is cast, and nothing is there
LTOSLTOSTOLSOTLOS[...]
Notes on a desert island
Three screens (a study)
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES
12 attempts at disappearing in front of the camera
A cameraman  filming or: FILMING/WATCHING/BURNING
Yes We Can








about

2025-
ongoing Untitled (broken signals)

LED light sculptures, variable dimensions



Three early studies in reconfiguring the light patterns and movements embedded in everyday digital objects into freestanding sculptural forms. Stripped of their original function, these lights seem to shift and signify solely within the affective realm.
Presented during Grote Rotterdamse Atelier Weekend 2025.

2025Sorry, no image (Placeholders)

Residency, solo exhibition
Rib, Rotterdam, NL





With a site-specific approach that considered the memory and architecture of the exhibition space as well as the surrounding urban environment and the digital sphere, in the four weeks of residency I made works that linger on and articulate the threshold between showing and hiding, between putting something on display and hiding something from view.

By looking for — or making — instances of missing or hidden images, I drew attention to the frames, interfaces, surfaces, and devices that mediate their appearance. Building on the evocative power of blank space, I aimed to expose and question the relations and expectations these structures produce, as well as the material conditions that create our experiences of images.

The works made during the residency were presented in an exhibition at Rib, which was open to the public from Friday, 5th to Sunday, 7th September.

The residency and exhibition were supported by CBK Rotterdam.

Documentation pictures by Lotte Stekelenburg.

2024-2025 nighshift




Digital video, bw, sound, loop, 00:15:25
text  text text

2025 A shadow is cast, and nothing is there

Installation, text animation, variable dimensions.  Color, sound. 18 minutes, looped.



In an ongoing exchange with the artist, a popular AI image generator model is led to expose and elaborate on its hidden inner workings. The result is a lucid and unexpectedly poetic monologue that explores the edges, gaps and tensions between human ways of seeing and of making images - physical processes carrying direct traces of the world, driven by desire - and those of the AI model - detached, data-driven, automatic.

By flipping the point of view and giving the machine agency to speak, the work unfolds an urgent reflection on the production and experience of images in the contemporary, as well as on the timeless, deeply human need to make sense of the world by making images of it. Inherently human activities - looking at the world and trying to grasp it by representing it - are described, discussed and re-defined from the non-human perspective of the AI model. Languages and modes of “making sense” - human and machinic, affective and algorithmic - overlap and collide, revealing both the possibilities and the limits of translation between them.

A shadow is cast, and nothing is there was made and exhibited in July 2025 on the occasion of the group exhibition Language(s) curated by Sweet Scope Studio at Garage Rotterdam, Rotterdam, NL.

2025LTOSLTOSTOLSOTLOS[...]

solo show


The Crooked Studio, artist-run space, Rotterdam, NL
A boat set sail to the horizon, to never come back. A word, found online, is screenshot and filmed up close. Live cameras scan the sea at night, every night, unseen, unwatched. Waves run in loops, stuck.

The signal holds steady, but something in the image slips.

As a montage of fragments that cross-reference and feed back into each other in space, LSOTOTLSLTOTSOL […] unfolds a reflection on the existential e/a-ffects of a mediated experience of the world through screens and images—and images of screens—on the tensions and technologies involved, on that ambiguous, sublime sense of loss and longing when blank staring into the infinite open of a seascape, or into the blind, fractal surface of a computer monitor.

Documentation pictures by Jake Caleb.

2022-ongoingNotes on a “desert” island (working title)

Ongoing research project, multimedia installation, variable dimensions





Notes on a “desert” island (working title) is an ongoing speculative research project on the - almost - impossible imagery of a small island whose inhabitants have rejected contact with outsiders for centuries, thus making it an almost completely unknown - and unseen - place. While in the media this island is often presented through the superficial cliché of the “desert” island between the sublime and the savage, it becomes in my work a paradoxical case-study to reflect on the epistemological and power dynamics that are inherent to image-making, its ontology and contemporary stakes.

Over the past three years I have gathered a heterogeneous archive of the island’s attempted representations: from century-old maps to aerial imagery and Google Earth renderings, amateur Youtube videos from airplanes and institutional documentary campaigns. Making images of this island seems to be a mean to get hold of it - grasping it by encasing it in grids, frames, screens - at a distance. Such attempt is almost impossible, yet surprisingly recurrent. All of the island’s imagery showcase - equally yet in different ways - an abstract nature, seemingly raising from the gap between the unattainability of the subject and the materiality of its representations. This peculiar aspect becomes in my work the starting point to reflect on the materiality, fiction and agency of images, challenging their expected representational value by exposing their artifice. 

Here you can find the documentation of a recent installation set-up of the project. Through gestures of appropriation, un-making, and re-staging of the island’s existing imagery, articulating notions of transparency and opacity, visibility and invisibility - both on a political and semiotic level - I am reflecting on how it confronts mankind’s image-making obsession with its failure and, at large, addressing the deeply human desire to make sense of the world by making images of it. The - supposed - name of the island is never said, nor the island is ever actually shown in the works. Its imagery and information are always questioned and screened through deliberate choices of opacity and abstraction that transcends any documentary interest in favor of a larger critical reflection on the stakes of their very existence.

2024 Three screens (a study)

Moving image installation, mixed media, variable dimensions.


De Vlakke Hamer, Rotterdam, NL
Three works which tentatively question (digital) screens and images as objects, articulating and exposing through their juxtaposition the threshold/tension between their expected representational function and their presentation as material devices, insisting on grids, edges, frames, flatness/depth, positvie/negative, image/object.

Three found screens, drawn from the artists' daily practice of observation and then variously manipulated through a studio-based, sculptural  approach to images.

Made as self-standing studies between 2022 and 2023, together they give shape to a formal self-reflection on the practice of image-making itself - its objects, devices, fields of existence - as well as an urgent speculation on the pervasive yet often overlooked presence of screens and images.

2023-2024BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES

Moving image installation, mixed media, variable dimensions


V2_Lab For Unstable Media, Rotterdam, NL

Two cameras chase each other in a deserted, misty landscape, a human figure is sometimes caught in between.
A conversation between a father and a son about a genetic disease causing blindness. Lost eyes of classical Greek sculptures caught on analog film and state-of-the-art technologies for retinal implants.

BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES articulates in an installation form a reflection on the blurred, multifaceted spaces between vision and blindness, visibility and invisibility, technologies of image-making and experiencing, subtly merging personal, political and formal concerns, lingering on thresholds, interfaces and moments of failure.

It displays an overview of the way my practice unfolded in 2023/2024, exploring recurring topics and fields of interests in a fragmented yet complementary way, through a speculative and sculptural approach to making (moving) images.


BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES is composed of four parts:

1) A choreography for two cameras, a body and a landscape
Digital video, 2-channel projection, dimensions variable 12 minutes, color, sound, looped

On a deserted Dutch beach in the middle of an industrial area, two cameras chase each other in the mist. One is an automated webcam, live-streaming the surrounding landscape 24/7. The other is a cinema camera on a tripod. A human figure appears, sometimes behind one of them, sometimes in front of the other,sometimes caught in-between the two. An absurd quest to see, and to see what? A layered reflection on gaze, visibility, technology, image-making and experience.

2) Glaucoma, they said
Digital video on 7’’ LCD screen, 9 minutes, color, sound, looped

A blurry text scrolls in front of two blinking eyes. As a dialogue between a son - the artist - and his father, it tells the story of a family’s genetic retinal disease and questions the possibility and consequences of losing vision.

3) Sensors I
16mm b/w film loop, 16mm film projector on floor, custom-built projection screen on floor and hanger/roller device from ceiling, dimensions and duration variable

Classic Greek sculptures (V sec. BC) would often feature detailed representations of eyes, either by means of miniature paintwork or with inlays crafted with precious materials. This was intended to make the statues look alive, real. Over time, these eyes turned into faded traces, holes, scratches. Shot in the Greek section of the Louvre Museum, this piece is a first attempt at capturing the decay of such realistic depictions of eyes through the material specificities of analog film, crafting a layered reflection on representation and its materiality, and a contemplation of a deeply human relation between seeing and being.

4) Sensors II
Digital video on 4’’ LCD screen, 1 minute, color, no sound, looped

The NanoRetina NR600 is an experimental device intended to partially restore vision of visually impaired people through its implant in their retinal tissue. It was considered the most advanced example of such vision technologies until the recent discontinuation of its development in late 2023. The video features a simple animation of the only image of NR600 found online questioning its scale and resolution, its materiality and visibility.

2023 12 attempts at disappearing in my studio

12 inkjet prints on photo paper, variable dimensions