Alessandra Sormani is a British-Italian multidisciplinary artist working across photography, moving image, painting, sound and text. Her practice centres on family-run spaces as living archives — places where histories, relationships, routines and values accumulate over generations.
Drawing on her family’s multi-generational history in hospitality and place, she explores how memory is carried through everyday environments and how identities are shaped by the domestic, professional and social systems people inhabit. Through painting, moving image, oral history and archival research, her work examines the emotional and cultural structures embedded within family businesses, communities and inherited spaces.
Born in Bristol, Sormani completed an Art Foundation at Central Saint Martins before studying at Chelsea College of Arts in London. She is based in Clevedon, North Somerset, where her practice and family history remain deeply intertwined.
She is co-founder of Sormani Vella, an evolving archive, project space and family business at 11 The Beach, Clevedon, through which ongoing research into care, hospitality, migration and belonging continues to unfold.
Related Projects
An evolving archive, project space and family business exploring art, hospitality, memory and place.
A seasonal ice cream kiosk and living archive situated within the Sormani Vella project, connecting contemporary hospitality with family history, oral histories and local memory.