SONIA PISCICELLI IZN

by Barbara Pavan

Sonia Piscicelli IZN (Naples, 1968) initially pursued studies in law, seemingly set on a career in the legal field. However, she soon decided to take a sabbatical year during which she worked at a television production studio and collaborated with the theater company “Libera scuola d’arte.” In 1989, she moved to Rome to attend the European Institute of Design, supporting herself through seasonal work in Val Gardena. She earned a diploma as an Art Director and Graphic Designer, embarking on an intense career in the field. In 2000, through the Interzona project, she transitioned to a more personal artistic dimension linked to web design, photography, and painting.

In 2005, she began exploring ceramics, and during a stay in Berlin the same year, she encountered embroidery art for the first time — an experience that remained dormant until it became her expressive language almost a decade later. In 2008, she founded “Il Pasto Nudo” to promote conscious consumption and revive ancient knowledge related to food and agriculture, supporting small Italian producers and raising awareness about distortions in the food market. However, it wasn’t until 2016 that embroidery emerged as her ultimate artistic vocation, replacing all other activities and becoming the cornerstone of her practice. This medium, embodying slowness, rituality, and consolation, led Piscicelli to rediscover an ancestral connection to the act of stitching, perhaps inherited from her seamstress grandmothers, despite never having embroidered before.

Her journey began accidentally, sparked by her memory of the Berlin encounter, and her first attempt—a simple embroidery on her daughter’s napkin initials—prompted her to refine her skills with the help of an embroiderer. Since then, embroidery has become for her a meditative art form, a way to think, plan, change, undo, and start anew, offering infinite second chances. Her use of natural and recycled materials, such as threads and fabrics, underscores the sustainability and ecological essence of her work. The fabric, already a weave of stories, interacts with the embroidered thread to create new narratives.

Her artistic expression initially manifested in works like La Nuvola and Vento (2018), created on large linen towels from her trousseau. Clouds, a recurring motif in her childhood drawings, symbolize something looming yet benevolent—an energy that flows and transforms. This theme reflects a tension between dream and reality, the imaginary realm, and the necessity of staying grounded. In her works, water, air, form, and matter merge into a poetic balance. Her language evolves from neutral tones and light ripples to more assertive colors, reflecting an internal dialogue between the desire to reveal and the need to conceal.

A turning point came with a deeply personal and meaningful work: an embroidered apron from her time as a waitress. Here, Piscicelli processed the pain of an abortion, transforming it into an intimate artwork that reflects the tension between guarding and revealing. Over time, her creations gained a new dimension through the use of boxes. Initially conceived as protective cases for her embroideries, these evolved into symbolic containers—projections of her state, suspended between vulnerability and exposure. These caskets, reminiscent of travel altars and breviaries, carry a cathartic and precious dimension. The boxes, combined with the use of recycled materials, evoke the past and the need to preserve memories.

In more recent phases, she explored three-dimensionality, creating a large embroidered cloud looming over two tiny trees. Through the interplay of transparency and pastel colors, she represents the relationship between nature and humanity. Natural phenomena, seemingly threatening, become protective, invoking acceptance and adaptation. A red veil covering the image—a symbol of fear—dissolves to reveal the beauty of a reality embraced in its authentic essence.

The dichotomy between nature and culture, and their coexistence, remains central in her latest works, about which we asked the artist herself to tell us more.

At the International Biennial of Fiber Art in Valtopina, you presented an installation inspired by the current debate on speciesism and the anthropocentric view of the planet and its inhabitants. Can you tell us more about this work? How does this research connect with your previous artistic journey, such as your experience with “Il Pasto Nudo” or Interzona?

I was born in an urban context, albeit a unique one like Naples, yet I have always felt a strong connection to the ecosystem and an urgency to restore the symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship we had with it not too long ago. Art is a powerful inspiration for change and action, offering a wide array of emotions and sensations, from discomfort to beauty, anger, and irony.

In my work exhibited at the MuRTAC in Valtopina, Pax Humana, I infused human traits into the animal and plant world. By showing the presumption of a pigeon, the megalomania of a mole rat, or the arrogance of a praying mantis—self-crowned kings and queens of a territory defined by the colors of the peace flag—I sought to highlight how absurd and ridiculous our claims of “improving” the environment often are. Modifications are made without attention to the “how” but only the “what,” such as chemical fertilizers that bloat plants with water to the brink of bursting, rendering them tasteless and destroying the soil’s fertility. Or, demanding endless benefits from the planet’s fauna without respecting its needs, its life, and life itself.

I loved the idea of expressing this through flags cut from old cotton sheets, which for months waved in front of the museum, exposed to wind and weather, yet remained steadfast in their pride.

Everything I have done in my life—particularly with “Il Pasto Nudo,” a nonprofit association for conscious consumption, and Interzona, the graphic studio I founded and which is still active—has, in a sense, been the starting point of an exploratory journey. This journey has been about uncovering hidden possibilities, ignored spaces, and difficult paths in a world that tends to favor the easy and fast route. This road has naturally led to art, which is all about divergent directions, and particularly to contemporary embroidery—the most ecological and respectful art form in my opinion. Its environmental impact can be minimal if approached thoughtfully, such as using only natural fabrics, threads, and recycled materials.

You are currently working on a collaborative project focusing on the theme of the periphery, combining photography and embroidery. How did this project originate? What is it about, and what meanings does it aim to convey? What parallels or intersections can be found between embroidery and photography techniques? How do they dialogue and intersect in the creative process?

In recent months, I have focused extensively on embroidering on paper and photographic prints. The embroidery technique is quite different here, even slower than on fabric, because great care is needed to avoid damaging the paper; what can be easily fixed with fabric is often irreparable with paper, especially photographic paper. I love working on something preexisting, particularly in collaboration with other artists, emotions, and intentions.

This is the case with Entanglement, the project you mentioned, which is based on the photographic works of Pasquale Liguori, a Neapolitan photographer living in Rome whose sensibility I find closely aligned with mine. His photographs, taken with a large-format camera at 5 a.m. on Sunday mornings—when people are concentrated in buildings, resting on their day off—portray the official Roman borgate (housing projects) built during the Fascist era for the poorest classes and the proletariat.

What initially struck me about his images was the sense of peace and calm they conveyed. This feeling, unusually for me, did not arise from a natural wooded or marine environment but from stark, squared-off buildings that I can’t stop contemplating. These modular constructions, steeped in an almost toxic rigor that aims to make everything uniform, come alive and vibrant through human presence, individuality merging within the collective.

From this arises the project’s name, Entanglement—a quantum term Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance.” This concept is fundamental to me; I believe that only by embracing this invisible yet omnipresent reality can we make a decisive step toward respecting everything and everyone around us. Understanding that all living beings and even objects are, in a quantum sense, part of ourselves — that any action directed toward or against something or someone is an action directed toward or against ourselves — can lead us to evolve into a society that seeks harmony with everything. Accepting what is and letting go of the obsessive need for control that dominates our time.

Sonia Piscicelli IZN has participated in numerous national and international exhibition projects. Recent highlights (2024) include the International Biennial of Contemporary Fiber Art Radici, Metamorfosi, Mescolanze at the MuRTAC Museo del Ricamo e del Tessile in Valtopina and the international exhibition Verba Creant at the Ernesto Balducci Library in Barberino di Mugello for The Europe Challenge promoted by the European Cultural Foundation; Logos, a collective show at SCD Textile&Art Studio in Perugia; and Animals at the multidisciplinary space La Dama di Capestrano, AQ.

In 2023, her artistic carreer unfolded through a variety of events, including XS Project — an itinerant exhibition showcased at BAF Bergamo, Gina Morandini Contemporary Textile Art Gallery in Maniago, and Studio B49 in Rome — and Naturales Quaestiones. La Cura at Malaspina Dal Verme Castle in Bobbio. She was selected for the international exhibition Unclassifiable at the Sala delle Pietre in Todi, promoted by Artout, and her work was included in Appunti su questo tempo at CasermArcheologica, Sansepolcro. The artist maintains an updated blog: https://artlab.interzona.it/