Federica Marangoni is a Venetian artist who has worked internationally, since the 1970s, in Europe, USA and Canada. Throughout her career, she has researched using various materials and technological media.
Since the late 1960s she has used plastics, polyester and, later, neon. In the 1970s she started using video and the moving image which became part of her installations and video performance. In 1979 Marangoni made the 16mm film ‘The Box of Life’ from one of her most important performances. In 1980 she was invited to do a screening of this film at the Museum of Modern Art, New York along with her performance ‘The Interrogation’.
In 1970 she set up her own design studio in Venice called ‘Fedra Studio Design’, which focused on product design and graphic design. In the same year she began to use and experiment with glass, working regularly with many Muranese furnaces. She created both design objects, as well as glass sculptures and large installations. These installations combined the technology of video as well as using neon lights and glass which made her work unique in the contemporary art world.
From 1976 to 1989 she was assistant professor in the Dept. of Art and Art Education at New York University. She has held seminars at NYU and summer workshop courses in Venice on the use of glass. She has also given lectures and courses in many universities and cultural centres in the United States and beyond, e.g. Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan (1977); Center for Creative Studies, Glass Dept. , University of Art and Design, Detroit, Michigan (1979); Patterson State College, N.J. (1978); Columbia University, New York, NY (1978); Parson School of Design, Altos de Chavon, Dominican Republic (workshop, November 1984); Pratt Institute, New York, NY (1995); Virginia Beach Art Center (1996). These last lectures focussed on a theme that Marangoni has long been inquiring: ‘Art, Art & Craft, Design: confrontation, analysis and interactivity’.