From the Spotlights to Luz, the Seed of Spirituality and Rebirth. Interview with artist Ludovico Tersigni

Ludovico Tersigni, actor and artist from Italy. Photo © Simone Paccini

Ludovico Tersigni returns to the public in a renewed, almost transfigured form. For many, he’s still the magnetic face of Skam Italia, the fragile and radiant protagonist of Summertime, or the actor who made his mark in Slam – Tutto per una ragazza and Arance e Martello. Others remember his spontaneity as a host on the Italian stage of X Factor. But behind the lights of the sets, in recent years, another life has taken hold: quieter, slower, more essential.

The transformation wasn’t just artistic, but profoundly internal. Born in Nettuno, near Rome, Tersigni embarked on a spiritual journey of listening, meditation, and discipline. Yoga became a daily destination, a return to body and breath. It’s from there – from that suspended time that flows between an asana and a fading thought – that his new creative identity seems to have emerged. A quest that has nothing to do with image, but with essence.

Perhaps this is why, speaking with him, ideas resonate with those who are walking a path of awareness. Like the reflection in the Fight Club movie: “The things you own, ultimately own you”. A warning that seems to echo in his sculptures, in his drawings, in the need to free oneself from what is unnecessary to return to the original matter of things.

Or like the words of the Italian journalist and writer Tiziano Terzani, who reminded us that: “Deep in everyone’s heart, what is right and what is wrong is already written, not by imposition, but by intuition”. A phrase that seems to describe the way Tersigni, also an author of books, approaches art: not to follow a rule, but to pursue his own, internal, almost ancestral truth.

*Atlantide © Ph. Alessandro Alessandrini*

This new phase of his life takes shape in two exhibition projects: Luz – Viaggio Verso la Redenzione, a solo exhibition at the Miart Gallery in Milan, and a selection of works presented in Rome in the group exhibition L’Arte dell’Avvento, at the Emmeotto Arte Gallery.

Luz is the pulsating center of this journey. Luz is not just a title, but a symbol of something more; its history is rooted in the most ancient spiritual traditions – from Jewish to Muslim, to the practice of yoga and the awakening of the Kundalini. It is a recurring form, an archetype. It is a seed, a nucleus, a vital organ.

Sometimes it is a compact mass, other times a fragment that seems on the verge of opening. Luz recounts an inner journey made of falls, restarts, and fractures that become glimpses. It is the vivid image of rebirth, the material that contains the possibility of clarity.

And the works – sculptures, textured canvases, impulsive and thoughtful drawings – all seem to arise from the same profound point: a place where spirituality, memory, the body, and discipline intertwine.

It is in this suspended space between public past and intimate present that the following conversation takes place. A sincere, vulnerable dialogue, in which Ludovico Tersigni recounts not only his artistic journey, but above all his human transformation: the need to listen to himself, the need for subtraction, his relationship with his family, the search for Light, his Luz.

Antiochia | Cartagine © Ph. Alessandro Alessandrini

How did you approach art, and sculpture in particular?

I was fortunate to have an eclectic and self-taught father. He was a doctor, but also a musician, guitarist, and singer; at the end of his life, he began playing the piano. He was curious and deeply artistic. My uncle was also a great artist, painting in oils, as was my father, who, over time, increasingly developed his own style.

I grew up surrounded by colors, brushes, and the smell of turpentine: for a child, it was a world of magical toys. All of this entered into me. When my father passed away, I believe a search began: a way to rediscover that complicity and that kind of perspective we shared.

I think the artistic process is linked to the search for a Daimon, a sort of invisible companion, like a thought that continues even when we are still.

*Damasco, Palazzo Ripetta, Rome, 2023 © Ph. Alessandro Alessandrini*

Is creativity a family legacy?

Yes. My grandfather was an antique restorer and cabinetmaker, and so was his father. In our family, we’ve always worked with our hands. You can start painting even at 50, sure, but if you see it as a child, it’s different. It’s like saying: I’m using what you taught me, but to tell my own things.

My father introduced me to drawing and the technique of chiaroscuro. Then a friend of mine asked me to accompany him to a sculpture class. I remembered that my father’s last work had been a little horse, and so I thought I’d use that “seed” he’d left me.

My second work was, in fact, a horse’s head, which my teacher, Alberto Emiliano Durante, then advised me to cast in bronze. Bronze changed my perspective on many things.

And it was precisely during a phase of personal research that you came to sculpture. How did this transition occur?

Mysteriously and naturally at the same time. At a certain point, I felt the need for a language that was more physical, more concrete, something I could literally touch with my hands. Clay, plaster, iron… it’s as if they called to me. I began as a self-taught artist, observing, making mistakes, and getting dirty.

And I realized that, here too, the body is the protagonist. In acting, you seek emotions; in sculpture, you seek forms. But in both cases, you seek yourself.

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