Get To Know… Ariella Napoli
A deep dive into all things ‘arts and ents’.
Words Indigo James // Image Crista Bradshaw
Ariella Napoli is a multidisciplinary artist and Co-Director at FELTspace – emerging with work that demands attention. Influenced by post-essentialist, queer, and feminist thinkers, she makes work for those who’ve been taught to shrink themselves – to withhold joy, to stay silent, to submit. Her practice explores the politics of control, pleasure, and the body. She uses materials like condoms, zip ties, and expanding foam to give physical form to tension and resistance. In her 2023 work fear my pleasure, foam is confined but unruly – always finding a way out. Napoli’s process is both instinctive and deliberate, shaped by a desire to reclaim space for messiness, sensuality, and transformation. Her strange, sexual, oozy works aren’t just a celebration – they’re an act of reclamation.
Tell us about your practice.
My art practice largely explores feminist themes of power and pleasure. I work across various media, including but not limited to film, installation, metal, and ceramics. I make work that celebrates diverse experiences and encourages people who have been denied or taught to deprive themselves of pleasure to seek it out.
Who are some of the artists, writers, or thinkers who have most influenced your work?
My practice has been significantly influenced by Post-Essentialist, queer, and feminist artists and writers such as Audre Lorde, Judith Butler, Joshua Serafin, Louise Bourgeois, Kate Bohunnis, and countless others.
Your work touches on intimate themes of the body, pleasure, and control. What first drew you to these ideas?
If I think about it, I have been drawn to these concepts since high school. As a teenager, I struggled with body image, feeling silenced by authority figures, and being told to conform to religious and conservative ideologies. My artistic practice became an outlet for aggravation and dissatisfaction; a way for me to examine and find pleasure in the nuances of myself that grew beyond imposed constraints.
You use materials like expanding foam, condoms, and zip ties. How do they help express the ideas behind your work?
In my 2023 work, fear my pleasure, I used those materials to physicalise tension. I focused on notions of submission/dominance, constriction/expulsion, and stricture/agency. Condoms, zip ties, and ropes confined the expanding foam to a limited space, but the foam would not be fully controlled and always found agency in its final form, just as I hoped for myself.
Fluidity and queer joy are central to your exhibition *slick friction*. How did you approach this, and what kind of reaction did you want to inspire?
*slick friction* was to be unrestricted to purposefully contrast the constriction used in fear my pleasure. Thus, I allowed my oozy materials to seep and drip freely, creating abject sensuality unbound by physical containment. I wanted to inspire a conflicting reaction from my audience, satisfaction with a bit of disgust. I aimed to capture occasionally grotesque, slippery playfulness that spoke to the complexities of pleasure and queer joy.
A lot of your work responds to how society frames gender, sex, and identity. What do you hope people take away from it?
I hope people see my strange, sexual, oozy artworks as a celebration of the facets of ourselves that are not always accepted by societal norms. I hope people take away the idea that we are never fully formed, just like my ooze, we are adaptive and ever-changing beings.
What advice would you give to emerging artists?
As an emerging artist myself, this advice is for me as much as it is for every one of my peers. To keep going, keep putting yourself out there, especially when you’re faced with rejection, and remember to have compassion for yourself. Something I value in my art practice is pleasure. I want to find creating pleasurable, not depleting, so I try to put myself first and take life as it comes.
Keep up to date with everything Ariella Napoli is working on via @ariella.napoli.art.
