ALBA CLEMENTE TALKS LIFE, LOVE AND ART
11.08.2026 ART & CULTURE
Open the gate and you’re in a courtyard shaded by a time-ravaged wall that once formed part of the city’s ancient system of fortifications. Behind, gardens climb the hill behind on a series of terraces. Inside the house, the high cross-vaulted ceilings, terracotta floor tiles and whitewashed walls lend an air of cool solidity. Its simple elegance comes from deep within – just like that of its owner, Alba Clemente.
Clemente was born in Amalfi. She was a fixture of the avant-garde Italian stage in the 1970s, before taking time out to raise the four children she has with her husband, artist Francesco Clemente. When she returned to an active artistic life, it was as both actress, costume designer, set designer, and as the creator of enigmatic installations and works on paper or fabric.
Clemente’s cycle Signor Mare (‘Lord Sea’ or ‘Mr Sea’) consists of forty painted ceramic tiles that are embedded here and there in the floor of Le Sirenuse Mare and the steps that lead to the beach club’s upper terraces.
They seem the scattered remnants of a very personal Tarot pack.
Mixing words and images, Clemente’s small rectangular tiles tap into the deepest sources of Mediterranean energy and spirituality while at the same time deploying a private library of symbols, a kind of sign-biography, that is only partly accessible to us.
In the following interview – recorded at her house in Amalfi, and edited to remove our questions, in order to preserve the freshness and spontaneity of her voice – Clemente talks of her childhood, artistic passions and inspirations, and her nuanced rapport with her hometown.
“My childhood in Amalfi was a kind of paradise, because there was no danger. We used to go around by ourselves from the age of four. There was this strong feeling of one big family protecting you. Everybody knew us. And it was all ages together. There was no separation between old people and young people. But I began to rebel quite early. When I was eleven I cut all my hair off. When she saw what I’d done, my grandmother cried. I would go to nightclubs and stay out until three in the morning. I really tried to break away from everything around me. But they made me pay for it. The town turned against me.
“I ran off to Naples to pursue my passion for the theatre. I started acting professionally before I even finished my studies, and ended up working in Rome with the great director Memè Perlini. Then I met my husband Francesco. A month later I was pregnant. Back then people didn’t really plan these things. And just like that, overnight, I gave up the theatre, even though it was my deepest passion.
“When we arrived in New York in 1980, it felt like the city had been waiting for us. Sure, it was bankrupt, falling apart. But despite everything, New York remained beautiful, and we fell deeply in love with it. From New York we kept going back and forth to the other place we both loved: India.
“So for years I didn’t come back to Amalfi, partly because I was so bitter about being judged, partly because my father refused to see me any more: he couldn’t accept that I wasn’t married, that I had a child, that I had appeared naked on stage. Francesco realized how painful that was for me and so although we didn’t believe in marriage, we did it for my family’s sake. And now we’ve been married for forty-eight years.
“My dad was living further down from this old family house, because he couldn't manage the stairs anymore. After seeing me looking around for houses on the Amalfi Coast, he did something wonderful. He offered me the house for so much less than what it was worth. I restored it, and I come back here every summer.
“I enter into a state that I call an emotional spasm, like a baby when it holds its breath. Once I get here, I don't want to leave.
“Like so many Amalfitans, I'm so attached to this house, to the land, the town, the sea, the garden. I feel like one of the plants that grow in this dry earth. Their roots are tough, you can't tear them out. I have to admit I feel a little guilty towards my husband because I leave him behind in New York. But who wants to be in New York in August? Only him!
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“I found a way into the Signor Mare project thanks to my architect friend Annarita Aversa. We were talking about one of my books of drawings. In this book there are five sections that correspond to the way my brain is divided up: emotions, memories, thoughts, politics, fantasy. Starting from this, she said to me: why don't you do an art project for Le Sirenuse Mare that looks as if one of your books had fallen open and all the pages were flying out?
“She sent me a little sketch of the beach club staircases, and I immediately sent her back an idea of how to do it. And from there it evolved. I did these drawings while I was here, so I was literally on location!”
Photos of Alba, house and book © Roberto Salomone
Photos of tiles © Stefan Giftthaler
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