Cecilia De Lucia is a visual artist based in Rome, where she lives and works at Wordlines Art Lab and Studio, her studio in Testaccio.
Her practice explores handwriting as image, material and trace of human presence. Through Wordlines, a project begun in 2008, she transforms literary passages, poetry, song lyrics and personal narratives into hand-drawn calligrams.
Following a professional background in art direction and marketing, she devoted herself fully to her artistic research. Initially centred on portraiture, her work has gradually evolved towards a more conceptual investigation of identity, memory, vulnerability and shared emotional experience.
Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Italy. Selected works from her Writers series belong to the permanent collection of the Alessandro Cialdi Library in Civitavecchia.
STATEMENT.
My practice begins with the relationship between language and image. I use my own handwriting not as ornament, but as a structural material: sentences become line, density, shadow and form.
I work with texts chosen for their connection to the subject or emotional state I want to explore. The process is entirely manual, and every ligature adapts to the rhythm and space of the image.
While my earlier works focused primarily on portraiture, my current research moves towards more conceptual compositions centred on identity, memory, solitude, vulnerability and connection. In these works, language does not simply describe an experience: it gives it a body.
STUDIO.
Wordlines Art Lab and Studio is Cecilia’s creative space in Testaccio, Rome. Opened in 2024, it is where her works are conceived and produced.
The studio also opens periodically to the public, hosting open studio events and exhibitions dedicated to her work—an opportunity to encounter the pieces within the space in which they take shape.