Tell us about how you became the woman you are today. Where did you grow up? What moments in life have influenced your character most?

I am Italian, born in Milan, but in the first years of life, I spent most of my time in a village at the bottom of the Alps.

There, I would spend hours climbing the trees in my grandma's garden, running through blooming fields caressing the wheat that my grandfather would plow a little later.

Those years spent breathing pure air, surrounded by nature, taught me to see the beauty in nature's details and I fell in love with colors, thousand varieties of flowers and the nuances of sunsets.

At home I used to spy on my grandmother while she was putting on make-up and combing her hair: the attention to details and the ritual of prepping herself,  has always been fascinating to me and from her, I learned the eternal beauty of a female body. While my mother taught me how strong and resilient women can be.

Years later, at 27, my professional career as an architect-led me to work in Seville.

This elegant city in the deep south of Spain, immediately deeply impressed me: the light of the sun in an ever-blue sky, the warmth and its culture full of women: flamencas with dotty and frilly dresses and flowers on its head, they awakened in me a curiosity and appreciation for their traditions. 

Those people were so happy with their life, I was overwhelmed by the positivity that never left me since then.

These are undoubtedly the moments that have most marked me, and even though they might look ordinary, they represent what led me to be the strong and self-confident woman I am today.  And undoubtedly they are the reason why in my collages I prefer female subjects and emotions represented through natural elements.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

 Tell us about the exact moment or period in time when you realized you were born to create.

In 2018 I had to leave my beloved Seville and move to Barcelona. Here the architectural projects I was following gave less and less space to creativity and I began to feel frustrated.

I start to feel that I had something inside that stirred me that wanted to find a way out through expression: it was my creative restlessness that I normally let off steam in interior design projects. 

So I started collaging to give voice to my creativity.

 Tell us a little bit about what drew you to your medium. Did you choose to work with said medium or did it choose you?

I would say it's an in-between situation. 

Ever since I attended the Art School, I had the habit of keeping a book note where I used to paste newspaper clippings, photos, dried flowers, quotes ... very randomly and without any aesthetical research but with an intention: to communicate something.

When I had to decide with which artistic medium I would have vented, it was natural for me to choose collages!

I recovered my Vogue collection and I started buying second-hand botanical magazines.

I thought: even in small houses there is always space for a bookshelf!

In A3 format folder, I keep my collages and I keep my cutters and scissors in a drawer.

A hobby that doesn’t take up much space, ideal for the micro-apartment where I live with my boyfriend.

 

A lot of women believe they need formal training in order to succeed as a female Artist. What’s your take? Did you have a formal education or are you self taught?

I studied Fine Arts and then I graduated at the Polytechnic in Architecture. I have an artistic and architectural education that is reflected in the balanced composition of my collages, the weight of the colors and the relationship between the dimensions of the subjects are certainly the result of this aesthetic influence.

But as far as the real technique of manual collages is concerned, I consider myself a self-taught because I didn't attend any course. In life I learned “to observe to learn” and thanks to technology and social networks, I had the chance to get in touch with the work of talented collagists from all over the world.

 What do you want the younger female artists coming up behind you to know about you, your journey, and the art industry in general?

Listen to your body, your needs, if you have something inside you that shakes you and wants to go out, create! Release it! Make art! And free yourself.

Remember that you create for yourself before anyone else! It is a necessity.

Don't be afraid of making mistakes, in art there is no "right" or "wrong", everything is "experimenting".

What do you know for sure?

That I am always hungry and I have to eat every two hours! Often I find myself eating also while I do collages! 

How do you define your creative gig? Full-time career or side hustle? Explain why you’ve chosen one over the other.

Currently, my collage-artist career is a bit complicated due to logistical issues: I am an architect and work as such from full-time Monday to Friday. Every day I try to save some time to create but it's only on Saturdays and Sundays that I really have the time and the calm to dedicate myself to collages.

In those days I like to go skating along the sea to relax, stop to meditate in a beach, let myself be inspired by observing the horizon, listening to the waves. Sometimes it is enough for me to stand among my plants on the balcony in the sun, clear my mind and feel the inspiration.

A relaxing mind it’s a creative one.

Then I put jazz music, sip a glass of wine and begin to browse through my magazines, to tear images, to retouch flowers, to compose and paste.

 

What is the message you're sending into the universe with your work? Why do you feel so strongly about said message?

Lately, I starting working on a series of collages entitled "Pleasure in a tin", that criticizes the taboos that still exist in modern society.

Specifically, these collages mainly embrace the topic of female masturbation and in second place the freedom of representation of the female nude body that lately has been censored by social networks.

I want to claim equality between women and men, also and above all in these intimate aspects that have not yet been cleared through customs.

But "THE FLOWER I BRING INSIDE" it’s the topic that most embraces my collages.

With this concept, I want to make portraits of the soul.

I deeply believe that the beauty of every human being lodged in its soul and cannot be seen from the surface, you have to go deeper and take a look inside.

I tried to investigate the subject in front of me, to understand their feelings, their mood, their melancholy, their sorrows or their energy, their explosiveness, their beauty and I give them the form of natural elements, leaves, flowers that bloom from the inside of their head or comes from its body.

From an exercise of looking beyond appearances, to respect and connect with the emotions of others.

Empathy as a reading key.

What is your biggest focus and/or goal in your career right now? What plans do you have for yourself 1,3,5 years from now?

My artistic career has just begun but lets me dream big.

In the short term, I would like to reduce my work as an architect to part-time to have all the afternoons free to dedicate myself to creating and feeling alive.

In 5 years I see myself established in the Art world, my workshops sell themselves and travel the world doing personal exhibitions. I can finally live from my art and I am an architect only for a hobby.

Basically all the opposite of what it is now.

Give us three of your favorite/ most inspiring things right now. Could be a book, a food, a destination, a song, a person, etc.

The song “Miedo” by M Clan

The Photos taken by the storyteller Cris Romasgosa

The book “Primero de poeta” by Patricia Benito