MICROMACRO IN LUGANO OPENS THE ANNUAL PROGRAM WITH GIULIA SANTAMBROGIO
MICROMACRO in Lugano, Switzerland, inaugurates its second exhibition season with Pensieri sparsi (2024), a modular installation by Giulia Santambrogio, curated by Francesco Maria Gamba. The work, composed of six elements made of elasticized cotton ribbon crocheted by hand, is part of the artist’s ongoing research, where the knot becomes a metaphor for thought— a thread that intertwines, tangles upon itself, giving rise to autonomous, fragmented, and self-contained forms. A dialogue between material and concept, it translates the complexity of inner reflection into tangible images.
MICROMACRO is an independent cultural and artistic project promoted by Atelier Viandanti, founded with a dual purpose: to showcase its own works while fostering an open dialogue with artists and creatives from the region. Despite its small dimensions, the exhibition space—set within the evocative setting of the majestic arcades of Palazzo Gargantini on the Lugano lakeside (Riva Giocondo Albertolli 5)—has established itself as a meaningful meeting point between art and the public. In 2024, this intimate yet deeply evocative place has nurtured a valuable cultural exchange, reaffirming the Atelier’s commitment to supporting art and culture as powerful amplifiers of meaning and value in both individual and collective experience. Within this context, Pensieri sparsi, Giulia Santambrogio’s installation, will be on view until February 16, 2025.
Giulia Santambrogio (Monza, 1996) lives and works in Lugano. After earning a degree in Painting from the Brera Academy in 2021, she developed an artistic practice that spans painting, textile sculpture, and performance. Her work delves into themes of nature, body awareness, movement, spirituality, and human relationships.
Her pictorial practice is inspired by the concept of body awareness, as developed by Austrian painter Maria Lassnig. This research has earned her notable recognition, including the second prize ex aequo at the 18th edition of the Morlotti Imbersago Prize in 2021.
Alongside painting, the artist explores textile work closely linked to the body and its performative function. Her performances bring to life what she refers to as “performative garments,” establishing a dialogue between artwork and gesture. In 2022, she presented the performance Io vado a pescare, created with the work Rete, as part of the exhibition Il corpo estraneo, curated by Barbara Pavan at SCD Studio in Perugia. That same year, she participated in the Biennale at MAM in Gazoldo degli Ippoliti, Mantua, inaugurating the event with the performance Oferta, inspired by the ancient Peruvian ritual of gratitude and offering to Mother Earth.
Her work is deeply rooted in personal experience, transforming the act of knotting—whether by hand or crochet—into a symbolic and material element of connection, memory, and re-elaboration. Her artistic practice unfolds through a continuous dialogue between body, material, and narrative, where thread becomes a visible trace of an interior and existential journey. Her most recent solo exhibition, inaugurated in February 2024 at the exhibition halls of Palazzo Ghirlanda Silva in Brugherio, is structured as a visual and conceptual itinerary that, through interweavings and stratifications, explores the theme of relationships: with herself, with others, and with the surrounding world. Central to her research is the use of discarded or repurposed textile materials, particularly threads and fabrics inherited from her paternal grandmother, which imbue her works with emotional significance and a sense of continuity between past and present, individual and collective memory.
