Amalia Pica

Amalia Pica explores communication through everyday objects and obsolete technologies in her art. Her often-silent installations address language and interpretation with a touch of humour, emphasizing the ironic potential for miscommunication.

UAP was first approached by Arts Everywhere and UNC Chapel Hill to develop fabrication methodologies for a wide array of preliminary concepts. Amalia Pica worked with UAP's digital team to review a comprehensive list of diagrams to assess initial fabrication strategies. This was to arrive at a list of strategies by type that uses layers of aluminum sheet, perf, and tube that are structurally stable compositions. Due to variable movement in the carpark levels, intentional break points at split levels of the façade were integrated along with strategies for multi-level projection with different anchoring types and conditions.

The numerous early concept diagrams were obtained from direct one-on-one interviews with tenured professors, students, and staff on the UNC campus with the intent to capture images, symbols, charts, and infographics that first year students in various fields of study would be able to recognize.

Our team at UAP is proud to have collaborated with Pica to create this collection of fabricated diagrammatic sculptures. We began by sketching out approach directions with feasibility notes to arrive at the final suite of designs ultimately carried through technical drawings. The project scope includes painted diagrams that adds a pop of colour and depth to the work from numerous vantage points.

'Drawn to Explain' was designed in close collaboration with Pica to be attached to the façade of an active parking garage. It was engineered to withstand building movement caused by standard expansion, wind load, and the additional live load of cars moving in and out of the structure. To accommodate this, the artist integrated a decorative break into the artwork that spans over two floors, and slotted holes were incorporated into the design at anchor attachment points to allow for differential movement.