Italian designer and artist Giulia Siviero is a collector. Fabrics, prints, and objects are all vessels in her eyes, their metaphorical vacuity encapsulating a story for her to reassemble. We sift through her archive of things, collected during her travels, while some treasures were found outside her door. Printed ephemera that has miraculously survived the ages, books, tchotchkes and perhaps her most lauded material of choice: textiles. Working with a loaded material, she understands the weight of each fibre beyond its physical presence. Giulia’s obsession with the tactile and the historical makes her somewhat of a curator, preserving and presenting her findings to us. We discuss her growing archive, its physical and digital forms, and the reality of balancing commercial and creative pursuits. As an artist whose practice is deeply rooted in a sense of place and memory, her work still succeeds in being nuanced, contemporary and open. Deeply sensitive, driven by the pursuit of cultural exchange and celebrating the provenance of the objects she collects, Siviero creates a pin and string board of objects few would think to connect. Settling into her corner of the shared studio, I find my perch on an armchair next to a side table with a burning candle. The overhead fluorescent lights are off, the sun has begun its descent, and we lock in. The atmosphere feels method, and we’re running with it.

Mia Butter: If you want to start by introducing your practice, we can go from there? 

Giulia Siviero: Sure, but I have to start from the beginning. 

MB: Please do!

GS: So I have a degree in graphic design, which was very commercial, but I studied at a fine arts academy. I decided to get my master's degree, also in graphic design, because my parents told me that I wouldn’t find a job in Italy as an artist. I went along with it, but my ultimate goal was to leave Italy, so I did this master's degree, also as a way to leave via the Erasmus programme. Everything changed in that moment, and I became so unhappy doing graphic design; I didn’t want to spend my life doing that. When I went to spend the last year of my degree at the fine arts academy in Lyon, I was still studying design, but they had a more artistic approach. I felt a massive opportunity to explore…