Biography

Serena Scapagnini (Rome, 1983) is an Italian visual artist and art historian based between Rome and New York.

She graduated from La Sapienza University, Rome, with a dissertation in Art Theory, Semiotics and History of Religion (2006) and she received her Master degree in Middle Age Art History, Iconography and Iconology at the University of Siena (2020).

She trained artistically between Paris (Université de Vincennes, Paris VIII, 2005) and New York, where she accomplished a Master Program in Painting and Mixed Media at the School of Visual Arts (2007).

Her projects explore the nature of memory as a field where perception, identity, and matter intertwine. From the human brain, synapses, saliency and dissipative processes, to phenomena in quantum computing such as quantum memory, decoherence, and qubit lifetimes in superconducting devices. Memory functions are in her research the conceptual bridge between neuroscience and quantum theory, with her artistic practice translating both into painting, drawing, sculpture, and engraving, as well as large-scale site-specific installations, and videos.

Scapagnini’s work has been shaped by a decades-long dialogue with Yale University, sustained by the Higley Lab in support of neuroscientific inquiry, imaging contributions and cross-disciplinary dialogue and further developed through collaborative projects with the Yale Quantum Institute, the Wu Tsai Institute, the Yale School of Medicine and the Tufts Hospital in Boston.

Since 2021, she has been a Young Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science.

Winner of the AiR Program at YQI – Yale Quantum Institute (2024) USA, winner of the residency program by the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale University (2025) USA and winner of the artist residency at the Boghossian Foundation, Villa Empain, Bruxelles, Belgium (2026), her work has been shown and collected in the United States, China, India, Sweden, Hungary, Spain, and Italy.

She lives and works between Rome and New York.