Essie Somma is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, collage, writing, and live performance. She holds a BA in Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a Certificate in Art and Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art London, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking at the University of Florida.

 

Grounded in feminist theory, Jungian psychoanalysis, and contemporary visual culture, her work explores the Trickster as a shapeshifting feminine archetype operating within liminal space. Through oil painting, magical realism, and performative gesture, Somma investigates the construction of femininity as adaptive, unstable, and socially produced. Her research and writing function as extensions of her studio practice, drawing on feminist texts to inform performances that blend humor, uncertainty, and transformation.

 

Somma has exhibited internationally and participated in artist residencies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, creating work that resists fixed identities and embraces hybridity as a form of liberation.