ALESSANDRA LETA
Born in Milan, 1997, Alessandra Leta is a visual artist. Trained as a photographer, her practice incorporates image-making, sculpture, installation, and mixed media. She primarily works with found objects and images retreived online, investigating the acts and language of collecting, looking, and display across historical and contemporary contexts.
She is currently based in the French Alsace and has her studio in Basel, Switzerland.
She also works as a commercial photographer.
WORKS
Chamber Drama (2026–)
Stressing the Surface Under (2026)
Shiny Things in Dark Rooms (2025)
The Unmovable Mover (2022-2024)
A Sudden Unspeakable Sweat (2024)
CV
CONTACT
hello@alessandraleta.com
instagram
+41 77 814 XX XX
ATELIER
Unterdessen
Schanzenstrasse 13
CH-4056 Basel
SHINY THINGS IN DARK ROOMS
(2025)
Shiny Things in Dark Rooms is a series of six plexiglass vitrines, each enclosing an MDF panel onto which Leta
prints found images sourced from educational films, nature documentaries, and online hunting videos.
Positioned above these images, almost like scientific samples or devotional miniatures, are framed photographs
of collectible glass bird figurines discovered through eBay listings. On the surface of each vitrine, the artist also
prints made-up dot-to-dot diagrams, turning the transparent case into an image that asks to be completed. The
installation borrows from the visual language of museum display and archival presentation, constructing an
environment suspended between scientific observation and fetishistic desire.
Shiny Things in Dark Rooms, IV, 2025
UV printed plexiglass, UV printed matboard, glossy print, MDF, screws, acrylic cement
70.8 x 50.4 x 10.6 cm
After the Afternoon. Regionale26, Exhibition view
Kunsthalle Basel, 2026
After the Afternoon. Regionale26, Exhibition view
Kunsthalle Basel, 2026
After the Afternoon. Regionale26, Exhibition view
Kunsthalle Basel, 2026
Shiny Things in Dark Rooms, 2025
detail
UV printed plexiglass, UV printed matboard, glossy print, MDF, screws, acrylic cement
70.8 x 50.4 x 10.6 cm
Shiny Things in Dark Rooms, II, 2025
UV printed plexiglass, UV printed matboard, glossy print, MDF, screws, acrylic cement
70.8 x 50.4 x 10.6 cm
Shiny Things in Dark Rooms, II, 2025
detail
UV printed plexiglass, UV printed matboard, glossy print, MDF, screws, acrylic cement
70.8 x 50.4 x 10.6 cm
The works were developed from the true story of a Swiss collector who, over the course of nearly a decade,
stole hundreds of rare bird feathers from natural history museums across Europe. Leta first encountered the
story through conversations with the head of the preparation department at the Natural History Museum of
Basel. Rather than reconstructing the events directly, the work approaches the narrative obliquely, through
fragments and parallel systems of representation. The bird repeatedly appears not as a living subject, but as
something captured, classified, circulated, collected, and immobilized through images and display structures. At
the center of the project lies a reflection on the historical relationship between photography, hunting, and the
natural sciences. Both photography and hunting share a strikingly similar vocabulary (shooting, capturing,
targeting, framing) but also a deeper historical entanglement. The expansion of photography throughout the
nineteenth century was profoundly tied to colonial exploration and scientific classification, where the image
became a tool for documenting, possessing, and organizing the world visually.
In Shiny Things in Dark Rooms, the museum vitrine ceases to function as a neutral display structure and instead
becomes a threshold where scientific authority, visual consumption, and desire collapse into one another.
Partially funded by the AIC (Aide individuelle à la création) of the French Ministry of Culture and DRAC Grand Est.