Early Life
Born in Como, Italy, in 1976, but with family ties in France and in the United States, Margot was exposed from a young age to an international environment. Her destiny is in her family name: errante, “she who walks without rest”. From the late ‘80s through 2010 she traveled solo across four continents and visited about a hundred countries, often tiptoeing around major historical events. She led quite an adventurous life until the birth of her son, in 2012. Noteworthy are her cross-country road trips: a two-month journey from Xining to Kathmandu by bus across Tibet and the Himalayas in 2000; a three-month journey from Italy to Japan by car, with a stopover in North Korea in 2005; and a coast-to-coast road trip in the USA in 2007.
Education
Margot’s passion for photography was born out of a close family friend’s interest in the medium. Yet art runs in the family tree: her Sicilian great-grandfather, Salvatore Mazzeo, was a painter and husband to a niece of the Italian Opera composer Giuseppe Verdi. The family tree counts several skilled drawers, including herself. Her mother’s strong sense of aesthetics and passion for theatre influenced Errante’s appreciation for beauty in all its forms, even though she did not have formal training in the arts, except for a few years of piano lessons. She pursued scientific and linguistic studies. After graduating from Liceo Scientifico College, Margot moved to Paris where she studied Langue et Civilisation Française at Sorbonne University. She returned to Italy and was admitted to the University for Interpreters and Translators in Trieste, where she took on Chinese studies, and a year later she moved to China where she lived for two decades. She became fluent in standard Chinese and a few southwestern Chinese dialects and wrote a grammar compendium of Chonqinghua. In 2004 she moved for a year to an indigenous village in South-West China, where she conducted ethnographic research on the Wa ethnic minority. Subsequently, she obtained a Master’s Degree in Cultural Anthropology from Yunnan University, China, and became a member of the American Anthropological Association. She started to practice Taoist meditation at Baiyun Guan Temple in Beijing and developed an interest in Neuroscience. Determined to pursue her academic passions she completed several MOOC courses, among which are: Neurobiology of Everyday Life offered by the University of Chicago; Advanced Neurobiology I and II offered by Pekin University; Buddhism and Modern Psychology offered by Princeton University. She is currently studying Buddhist Philosophy, and occasionally attends seminars at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Pomaia (Pi), Italy. Margot is a disciplined practitioner of meditation.
Photographic Career
Margot began to photograph at the age of eight with the 35mm Olympus film camera of a family friend. She practiced photography as a hobby throughout her adolescence and bought her first professional camera - a Nikon F100 - when she moved to an indigenous village in South-West China to do anthropological research. It was a pivotal experience that profoundly transformed her and to which she dedicated her first photographic exhibition — Wa: Immagini e Parole Nomadi — in 2005. That same year she drove from Italy through Eastern Europe and Central Asia to reach Japan on a diplomatic mission sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which included a stopover in North Korea. The passion for reportage was born. She worked for a few years as a freelance photojournalist; in 2007 she produced a short film on Canadian Aborigines; in 2008 she wrote, directed, and hosted the television program Beijing Express, produced and broadcasted by CNBC. While witnessing the massive reconstruction of Chinese cities, she became interested in architecture and the psychological impact of post-Maoist urban development on dwellers’ lives. She wrote essays about the anthropology of architecture and recorded interviews with some key figures of Beijing’s artistic and academic world. She planned a publication, but the local police repeatedly hindered the making of urban photos. Margot eventually sold the images that she was able to shoot to a Spanish editor who published them in Beijing Architecture & Design (2008). She associated with some Chinese star architects who introduced her to the underground art scene of the capital and became an habitué of the 798 Art District. Until one night in 2009, someone raided her apartment and stole her entire photographic archive: more than 10.000 negatives — fifteen years of worldwide travels and life in China. Following that loss, she left the capital and never returned. She settled in Hong Kong, where in 2010 she was offered the opportunity to co-curate the city’s pavilion at the XII Edition of the International Exhibition of Architecture at Venice Biennale. In Hong Kong, she worked as a freelance photographer for renowned architecture firms and international brands such as Cartier and Hermès, but it is when she took up fine art portraiture that she became well-known to the general public. With the birth of her son in 2012, looking for a more stable working life, she opened her photographic studio in the Sheung Wan district. The prestigious Studio Harcourt Paris offered her a three-month training to learn the cinematic portraiture technique of the Thirties, and Margot helped with the opening of the Hong Kong branch. In 2015 she met American photojournalist Christopher Morris, who encouraged her to produce her first artistic series: Human Nature. Two weeks later, some images were selected by a local gallery to be displayed in a collective exhibition during Art Basel Hong Kong. Since then, Margot regularly shows her works at international exhibitions, festivals, and fairs. In 2018 she relocated to Italy. In 2019, Human Nature was awarded the First Prize at Paris Fotofever - among the jury was Pierre Mothes, Vice-President of Sotheby’s France.
Past Gallery Representation
Lightstage Gallery, Hong Kong
Novalis Contemporary Art & Design, Hong Kong
Heillandi Fotografie, Lugano, Switzerland