Saliency, La Memoria Cangiante
WTI Artist-in-Residence: Serena Scapagnini
Thursday, June 4, 2026
4:30 - 5:30 pm
100 College Street
Floor 11 Lounge
The Wu Tsai Institute commemorates the conclusion of the 2025-26 Artist-in-Residence Serena Scapagnini with the presentation of her original, site-specific work, Saliency, La Memoria Cangiante. The work will be presented by the artist in conversation with researchers at the Institute who influenced her artistic process for the installation at 100 College.
The piece is realized in mixed media on paper with a backlit installation and imagines memory as a field where perception, identity, and matter intertwine. It approaches memory through delicate drawing as a form of saliency—the perceptual mechanism through which certain elements emerge while others recede.
Scapagnini is hosted by Wu Tsai Faculty Member Mike Higley. This event is open to the Yale community. Please send questions to wti@yale.edu.
The Wu Tsai Institute hosts Serena Scapagnini as the 2025-26 WTI Artist-in-Residence. During the residency, Serena collaborated with scientists, students, and staff to blend artistic and scientific perspectives on the intricacies of memory—in the human brain, in biological systems, and in machines. The artist reflected on the essence of memory in the layered nature of reality through this multidisciplinary and multidimensional exploration of vision, perception, memory, and the human condition.
Serena Scapagnini was born in Rome and graduated from La Sapienza University, Rome with a dissertation in Art Theory, Semiotics and History of Religion (2006). She received her Masters degree in Middle Age Art History, Iconography and Iconology at the University of Siena (2020). Her art education began in Paris (Universitée de Vincennes, Paris VIII, 2005) and continued in New York, where she completed a Master Program in Painting and Mixed Media at the School of Visual Arts (2007).
Scapagnini combines physical and spiritual elements, driven by wonder for the natural rhythm of perception and memory. Her works layer paintings and drawings on paper, combined with multidimensional video and light installations to explore the intricacies of memory—from the human brain to synapses to quantum computing. Integrating artistic and scientific perspectives with the experiences of the observer, Serena Scapagnini aims to reflect a multidisciplinary and multidimensional exploration of vision, perception, memory, and human condition. Her work has been shown and collected internationally in the United States, China, India, Sweden, Hungary, Spain and Italy.
Scapagnini’s recent research focuses on a project dedicated to mind and memory, developed since 2012 in collaboration with Mike Higley, Faculty Member in the Wu Tsai Institute and in the Department of Neuroscience, Yale University. In 2021, she became a Young Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science. She has been the Artist-in-Residence at the Yale Quantum Institute (2024-25).