Paper Surgery

Paper Surgery is Vale, (She / It ; b. 1977) hailing from Rome (ShITtaly), based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. An analog collage artist, graphic designer, freelance chef and theatrical costume designer, she adopted early inspirations in art through her late mother - a renaissance art restorer and designer. Play sessions with leftover Letrasets stoked a lifelong fascination in typography, and Vale as a teen, became influenced into the punk aesthetic through DIY fanzine / album cover designs, comics, graffiti, cyberpunk culture and fashion.
Hanging out in squats throughout her life, Vale abides by the ethos of complete anarchistic, independent media production and self-promotion. Themes that are often present in her artwork include capitalism as a modus vivendi for the planet, fascism in a global scale, micro-fascism within ourselves (power struggles, money, spirituality, authority) and the hypocrisy of glamorized modern-day activism.
The few personal ethical and technical rules that Vale aligns with in composing their analog collages are strictly using only paper from recycled or found material (never purchasing a book/magazine/newspaper), never printing an image and never digitally manipulating an image.
Heavily influenced by Dadaism, Situationism, architecture, archeology and a complex set of musical references, Vale, under the guise of Paper Surgery: Collage Maker for Mass Subversion, intends to give back some of the visual garbage that society imposes us on through the surgical precision of collage. Often it feels more like the work of coroner than a designer, elegantly provocative and begs you to implore the contradictions in our existence.