Participants
Artists and Designers
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Alessandra d’Urso was born in Milan in 1978. She studied photography at the International Center of Photography and film at the New York Film Academy.
Upon her graduation she moved to Paris and worked for the Magnum Agency as an intern.
She spent the following years traveling around the world producing stories about social issues for different magazines, projects and exhibitions.
She lives and works in Paris.
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Antonio Aricò is an Italian artist, designer and creative director. After earning a double degree at Milan Polytechnic he obtained his master’s degree with a work based on the themes of Design & Tradition, combining the fields of art, craft and design. These theories merged with the poetic of contemporary culture, make up Aricò’s inter-disciplinary practice today. He is known as forerunner of a unique approach that parallels crafts and self-production with industrial design.
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Cosma Frascina studied Industrial Design at ISIA in Florence and went on to develop a practice that incapsulates the meticulous research on material properties proper of design production while expanding the discourse on where the spectrum of design and that of art can be delineated.
Frascina perfected a technical language that borrows from the artisanal tradition of his natal land Salento and its natural resources, whilst spotlighting how human intervention dissolves the territory from which it draws and how the territory may dissolve back. Calcarenite stone, marble and concrete are the dialoguing spectacle between the brutal force nature can exert on human frailty and the barbarity of man-made interference.
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In his artistic research, Diego Cibelli explores humanistic geography, interpreted as the study of territories, their history and the related sense of belonging that human beings develop. His designs are often imbued with rich narrative potential – as markers of time, existence and existential musing. Cibelli’s design practice is mainly based on the use of ceramics and porcelain. These media become an open link ready to connect a variety of artistic techniques, visions and historical references blending to create designs in which past, present and future coexist.
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Peter Matthews works alone along the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and has been since 2007 when he started drawing directly in the Pacific in Mexico after a near death experience while surfing.
Immersion with the ocean and nature is central to my practice, as is the notion and experience of the journey. He does not work in a studio, rather, his work straddles the performative and the conceptual, the experimental and process and material based inquiries into how he experiences time, place, space, the sublime, the ineffable, the transient, the impermanent, the romantic, the mysterious and the poetic.
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Rachel Hayes received her BFA in Fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute, and her MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. Often using fabric to create large-scale work, she is interested in inserting color and form into both built and natural environments.
Hayes has collaborated with the Italian fashion house Missoni, culminating with a solo exhibition during Milan Design Week. Recently, she exhibited site-specific installations with ISTANBUL74 during the 16th Contemporary Istanbul, in Turkey and at NOMAD in Capri, IT. In September 2023, she was invited to exhibit at the ancient Agora of Smyrna for the Turkish Textile Biennial. Her installation “Someday When We Are Dreaming” is currently up in the atrium at the Nevada Museum of Art through 2026. Her work has been covered by The New Yorker, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Vogue, The Cut, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, and Artforum among others.
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For more than 25 years, Renzo Buttazzo has worked with Pietra Leccese limestone, blending traditional hand-carving with experimental techniques to create a unique style. His work aims to make the unseen visible, transforming abstract ideas into physical forms that express life's contradictions—rational and mysterious, finite and infinite, positive and negative. Buttazzo transforms the stone from heavy and rigid to light, soft, and fluid, juxtaposing mass with void and fullness with emptiness. Their creations, marked by hand-held tools, are produced in limited series and can be customized for clients. His range includes sculptures, furniture, lamps, and sculpted walls, featured in international media and collections, and they frequently collaborate on site-specific projects with architects, art dealers, and designers.
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There lives within me an insatiable appetite to squeeze from every fragment a universe. That's probably the exaggeration factor in all Italians, or all Latin's for that sake. We enjoy amplifying mundane issues and converting them into seemingly life changing happenings, and what's worse, we believe them to be universally significant. I take possession of stories that may or may not be my own and cast myself as the protagonist. These fictitious characters live within my paintings and I let them breathe the moment, the minute details, to the point in which I lose touch with what is reality and what is fiction; what's mine and what I've borrowed. Each painting is like sitting in at someone else's private therapy session. I interpret an existence and adopt it as my own. For a lack of a better term: I steal you. There is a touch of irony in my work, a quasi-whim. An infantile, unattached distraction, which gives shape to color and life to those shapes. Nothing is accidental and everything is most definitely unpremeditated.
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Galleria Antonella Villanova was founded in Florence in 2008. Since its foundation the gallery has been involved in the promotion of internationally-known artists and designers, focusing on contemporay jewelry. Galleria Antonella Villanova is collaborating with important private and public institutions.
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Blomour is a creative studio specializing in botanical design.
Blomour manipulates natural materials to integrate and restore nature into evolving lifestyles and urban environments. Their projects showcase the potent potential of our planet's materials, spanning creative direction, concept design, strategy, content development, scenography, and set design for editorials, events, and large-scale installations.
Special Projects
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Flags For Future is a sustainable art project supporting the conservation of our waters. Presented by ISTANBUL'74 and Utöpia.
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Plant Passenger is an experiential design studio that specializes in live art installations, featuring vehicles brimming with greenery. Juxtaposing Mother Nature against human design, the concept of Plant Passenger emerged from the mind of Keith Martine, a New York-based creative with a deep-seated passion for nature, design, and community impact.
Today, these installations have transcended their original purpose, evolving into dynamic platforms where brands can weave their stories and champion eco-consciousness.
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The Pino Pascali Museum was founded in 1998 following an important family donation of the artist’s works and relics. In 2010 the Museum was turned into the Pino Pascali Foundation. The Apulia Region and the Municipality of Polignano a Mare both have shares of the Foundation which has, however, independent statute and regulations. The Foundation is located on the site of the town’s former abattoir in the southern area of the town overlooking the sea, Pino Pascali’s idea of a dream house.
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A visual storytelling project on a selection of yeast-people protagonists of biodiversity, hospitality and e(t)nogastronomy in Puglia.
