Table of contents

1 White Powder, White Stone2 Alpini3 Unmasking4 Terrazzo

White Powder, White Stone, 2017

References: Giuseppe Penone, Jannis Kounellis

Drawing on memories of the Venetian stories that my grandparents told me as I grew up, this collection of sculptures collide elements of the narratives as if trying—and failing—to recreate the same arc.

I produced this collection in my family’s ceramic factory in Nove, Italy—a small town between Venice and the Dolomites where my grandfather was born. Drawing on memories of the Venetian stories that my grandparents told me as I grew up, this collection of sculptures collides elements of the narratives as if trying—and failing—to recreate the same arc. The attempt to bring back my grandparents’ voices, to remember those stories exactly as they were, is as futile as turning dust back into stone.

Coming to Nove, I felt that I had emerged into Bertilla and Onorino’s stories, somehow even more fantastical for all of the land’s layered memories: the WWII bullet holes that mark the factory walls; the passion flowers that climb the walls inside my grandmother’s childhood home. The place was real all along, but now it was my time to find adventure. In a sense, this was my grandparents’ last gift to me—an end turning into a beginning.

Each work is based on stories or images of Italy that Bertilla and Onorino told me as a child.

Firefly

In Firefly, a tower-like form sits on a wooden pedestal, surrounded by small lights. As a child, my grandmother Bertilla would catch fireflies in a jar and use this improvised light to run through the fields at night. Many years later, when I first came to Nove, I visited the house that she grew up in. As the sun set, I looked into the abandoned structure and found it full of fireflies, like something out of imagination. In the sculptural installation, the chimney at the center of the lights refers to the hearth as a place for sharing warmth and stories.

When Bertilla was young, she would help with household chores like washing the laundry in the nearby river, scrubbing and cleaning the sheets in the shallows. One day, she misjudged the current and the river tore the cloth from her hand, sweeping it swiftly downstream. I like to imagine that the sheet fled fish-like all the way to Venice and the sea. River Fish recreates this narrative, perforating a piece of fabric, painted with natural black powder mixed with rabbit skin glue, with fish-like scales and tethering it in the stream behind my uncle’s ceramics factory in Nove.

Curtain sketches the contours of a window frame in thin metal rods and cloth. Before they married, Onorino would bicycle an hour to visit Bertilla in Breganze. When they said goodbye again, Bertilla would run up to her bedroom window—which faced the direction of Onorino’s hometown, Nove—and would wave her handkerchief as he rode off. Every so often, he would look over his shoulder to see her still waving. This piece reconstructs this image with fabric from Bonotto, a fabric factory founded in 1912 and based in Breganze.

Alpini, 2019

After WWII, my grandfather Onorino trained to be a member of the Alpini—the Italian military branch located in the mountains. He loved the mountains and was proud to join the Alpini, whose insignia is shaped like twin pinnacles, a simplified rendering of the range which gives the branch its name.

When I was growing up, my grandfather often spoke about the Tre Cime, a formation of three peaks in the Dolomites. I have always felt a certain uneasiness about the frequent comparison of these three rock faces to military architecture such as battlements or Medieval merlons—types of parapets with openings that allow the defending army to launch weapons at their adversaries below. The characterization strays too close to my grandfather’s own martial ties to those peaks and hints at a militant perception of the world in which a mountain can only be seen for its defensive value. In a literal sense, those mountains divide people. The Dolomites functioned as the border between Italy and Austria-Hungary until 1919, and, to this day, they are still the point of separation between language communities in Italy—German-speaking to the north and Italian to the south.

When I first visited that trifold formation, the sky was white like an empty canvas. At first I was disappointed. I feel a deep connection to Onorino—who was a ceramicist and maker like me—even though he passed away when I was only thirteen. I felt that the ascent into those higher reaches of the world was in some way a path closer to him. I had imagined my visit to one of his favorite places backgrounded by blue skies, like an omen from smiling ancestors. Instead, I found myself surrounded by the forbidding expanse of a barren cloudscape. It was only later, looking at my photographs from the trip, that I saw those desolate skies for what they were—an invitation, following Domenico Modugno’s 1958 song “Volare,” to color the sky blue and invent my own memories in paint. Not all of my additions to the photos are utopic. Through the washes of color, I create a range of feelings oppressive, idyllic, and otherworldly.

The Ladin people of northern Italy have a folktale about the Dolomites—or the “Pale Mountains,” as they call them. In the story, a mountain prince married a beautiful woman from the moon and brought her to live with him amongst the rocky peaks. Over time, looking out over the colorless range, his lunar bride grew homesick. She left to return to her home in the sky. Heartbroken, the prince wandered the lands, where he met a gnome who offered to paint the mountains in vivid color so that the prince’s bride would return to him at last. The lovers were reunited amidst a landscape brought to life by paint.

In Alpini, the painted photographs and the stone skins scattered throughout the space are intended to evoke the possibility of encountering the ethereal in the everyday. These marble fragments are the discarded material from stone quarrying, the irregular surface that is cut away to create smooth slabs for architectural use. Their cragged and pocked surfaces remind me of the moon’s dusty terrain—while these painted skies are like the colored mountains that brought the lunar woman back to the Italian prince. Reinterpreting this mountainous landscape as an alien topography, I wonder if this is also what drew Onorino to the Alps—a love not for the familiar but for the unknown.

UnMasking, 2020

In the intricate web of history and art, threads of past pandemics intertwine with modern crises, creating a tapestry of reflection and resilience. One such artistic endeavor delves deep into the realms of Venice's haunting past, weaving together the threads of the Black Plague and COVID-19, all through the translucent beauty of Murano glass and ceramic masks. In a world often masked by societal expectations and roles, Murano glass serves as a metaphorical mirror, encouraging us to embrace transparency, authenticity, and the beauty of our unmasked souls.

Imagine stepping into a gallery where history and contemporary commentary converge in a symphony of creativity. Your eyes are drawn to photographs capturing the ethereal allure of Murano glass, known for its centuries-old craftsmanship rooted in the lagoons of Venice.

Amidst these images, ceramic masks reminiscent of the iconic De Lorme nose masks hang on the walls, their forms a testament to the enduring symbol of protection and disguise. Yet, in this narrative, they speak of more than mere physical barriers. One of the Latin words for "mask" is "persona," a term rich with psychological depth. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung's concept of the persona as our outward-facing self, our masked identity, adds layers of meaning to these creations.

The project delves into the dialectic between concealed and true selves, between facade and identity. The mask, once seen as a barrier during the pandemic, becomes a symbol of introspection and connection. As the artist behind this project reflects, being masked led to a newfound focus on eye contact—the "windows to the soul." In a world veiled by masks, this became an avenue for forging deeper connections, transcending physical barriers to touch upon shared humanity.

Central to this artistic narrative is a candle, a miniature De Lorme nose mask crafted in glass. Its semi-transparency invites contemplation, symbolizing the gradual removal of masks—both literal and metaphorical. The flame flickering within, visible through the eyes of the mask, becomes a metaphor for illumination, for shedding light on our hidden selves and shared experiences.

The choice of Murano glass adds layers of symbolism. Known for its semi-transparency, it embodies the journey towards transparency and vulnerability. It echoes the artist's quest to remove societal masks and foster genuine connections, much like the glass itself reveals glimpses of what lies beneath its surface.

As you immerse yourself in this artistic narrative, let it serve as a reminder of the human capacity for adaptation, introspection, and resilience in the face of challenges. Through art, we confront our past, navigate our present, and envision a future where connections transcend barriers, and masks—both physical and metaphorical—are cast aside in favor of authentic human interaction.

I began this collection in March 2020, when Coronavirus arrived in Italy and my mind kept conflating the past and the present. The Renaissance was born out of a nonlinear vision of time, the knowledge of the ancients entering the consciousness of 16th century Italians. I felt that, perhaps, the same thing might happen again centuries later.

2. Bella Ciao

From the 17th century to the middle of the 20th century, thousands of women would flock to northern Italy to work as mondine

, weeding the rice paddies of Vercelli, Novara, and Cremona for the forty grueling days of the growing season. Standing in the flooded fields from the break of day until sunset, these migrant workers suffered increasingly poor conditions—paid per day without overtime and working under foremen who stretched the limits of a “day” to nine or ten hour periods.

The experiences of these women are recounted in the Italian folk song “Bella ciao,” which, in the words of historian Diana Garvin, “sings the story of one day and every day in the life of the mondine.” The song charts a mondina’s toil from the sorrowful farewell to her family—evoked repeatedly in the song’s chorus, “O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao”—to her arduous labor in the fields under the watchful eye of an overseer who is characterized in terms of sexual violence and authoritarian power (“The overseer with his rod . . . And us bent over at work”). However, as Garvin observes, even as it bemoans the mondina’s separation from family and her long hours of labor, “Bella ciao” reveals the rice fields as a site in which the solitary female body is able to unite with a collective female body. Though the majority of the song is in the first person, the final verse captures the mondina’s realization of her ambitions for a newfound political agency:“But a day will come when all of us will work in liberty!”

In 1906, the mondine began to organize and put their collectivized power to the test, orchestrating a series of work stoppages. “Bella ciao” became one of several protest anthems fueling their efforts to instate an eight-hour workday. Though their strikes were immediately successful—with ramifications that helped temporarily secure the rights of workers across other manual labor industries including metal-working, baking, and gardening—an increasingly conservative political climate would later see this progress revoked. As fascism came to power in Italy, the government attempted to harness the mondine by placing them in the symbolic role of nurturers in political propaganda.

Garvin has written eloquently on the paradoxes built into this portrait of the female working class: There are many different ways to feed the nation: directly, by cooking and serving food, and indirectly, by producing the raw ingredients. . . . This form of doubled feeding of nation and family revealed several awkward contradictions within the Fascist party. First, the social conservatism of the Italian Fascist party claimed that a woman's place was in the home, but strongly supported using a predominantly female labor force in the fields for economic reasons. . . . Second, pronatalist rhetoric celebrated the high fertility of the Italian country women but working in the fields temporarily suspended women's fertility. Not only were they away from men for this period, but the difficult labor conditions suppressed menstruation. . . . What does it mean to be celebrated by the state as a human symbol of ideas that you reject?

As the workers began to see that their struggle was not just with the farmers, but with the government as well, “Bella ciao” expanded in use becoming—between 1943 and 1945—a rallying cry for the anti-fascist resistance.

Part installation and part extended activation, this collection draws upon this history of “Bella ciao” as a paean to those who are believed to be powerless—workers struggling against capitalist greed. At the center of the space, a table is laden with platters of risotto, from which a viewer is invited to serve themselves up a plate. Each serving bowl is handmade—suggesting unique rather than mass production

—and contains a different type of risotto, flavored with seasonal vegetables such as radicchio, mushroom, or asparagus. Behind this centerpiece, invoking laborious modes of production, rice “paintings”—in which grains are toasted

to different shades— and hand-stitched banners replicate the haunting chorus of the protest song. While opening this group of works to the embodied experience of a viewer, I also intend for this setting of food to be read in a political light, inviting discussion and the potential for collectivity in a gesture to relational aesthetics that harkens back to my graduate studies with Rirkrit Tiravanija. Though far from a rice paddy, this installation troubles the conventional and apolitical understanding of care.

The lamp made in dedication to the resistance and workers rights, is specifically created using the exterior shell of the plaster mold. Wanting to rebel against the original purpose of the form, the interior of the mold which is made to create the form remains invisible, and I use only the exterior shape to produce a new way of working. I ensure gestures of the fingers are seen during the making of the lamp, the clay is never smoothed out but rather left in a raw and natural manner allowing the viewer to connect to the worker/artist behind this clay form.

Terrazzo, 2021

Studying the colors of the terra, which in Latin literally means ‘earth’. Italy is famous for the rich minerals of its soil, which have been used to pigment works of art for hundreds of years.

Many colors continue to be named for their Italian origins—including Italian Green Umber, Verona Green, Italian Yellow Earth, Ercolano red, Italian Burnt Umber, Italian Raw Sienna, Naples yellow, and Venetian Red.

I draw upon this history of color in small paintings of Venetian terrazzo—a type of flooring made from polished, composite of stone chips and cement, which is crafted from excess materials from other construction projects. These intimate, to-scale paintings reflect upon age-old investments in natural materials and zero waste.