Annalisa Caricato
Visual artist and art therapist. Born in Italy in 1974, living in Switzerland.
The agile and fragile musketeer
Annalisa Caricato is a direct descendant of Alexandre Dumas on her father’s side. She carries an inheritance made of stories, ideals, and transformations. Inspired by the literary and humanist legacy of her ancestor, she calls herself the agile and fragile musketeer.
From fashion to art
She trained in design, fashion, and contemporary art, and studied at the Scuola di Disegno Industriale in Rome. She worked with major luxury brands and created her own line of sculptural bags.
She then left the fashion world to return to her artistic practice and devote herself to art as a tool for awareness and social impact. In Rome, she also did socio-educational work at the L’Ornitorinco mental rehabilitation centre.
Art as a tool for rebirth
Her main language is three-dimensional collage. Through it, she turns inner fragmentation into beauty, resilience, and meaning. Forgotten objects become symbols of memory and metamorphosis, in a process that joins art and humanity.
Her poetics revolve around the obsolescence of objects, used as a metaphor to question human consumerism and the workings of the soul, with particular attention to the condition of women. Her practice is a form of poetic activism: it gives a voice to vulnerability and to the real possibility of rebirth.
The cage and the crown
Her works are driven by two recurring symbols, the cage and the crown. They express a passage from emptiness to fullness, from fragility to antifragility, meaning the ability to turn difficulties into inner strength. The reference is the thought of the Lebanese philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Between the cage and the crown unfolds a movement that unites opposites. With it, the artist addresses central themes of contemporary Western culture:
- the neutrality of the feminine;
- the liberation of the body;
- gender affirmation;
- inclusivity;
- conscious sensitivity.
These questions become poetic statements that celebrate nonconformity and provocation, and that reflect on the challenges women face in order to be recognised and valued.
The Agile-Fragile project
Agile-Fragile is an invitation to turn wounds into strength and to rewrite one’s own story through art. With empathy and rigour, Annalisa accompanies those looking for meaning and transformation, through individual and institutional programmes, working with fragile young people, adults in crisis, and older people who need to be heard.