Cross Cultural Chairs book

2021

Editorial design
170x240mm
300pages
1st edition edited by Onomatopee
2nd edition edited by Set Margins.
Designed together with Albert Romagosa.
Silver LAUS Prize Editorial Design 2022.

People, they move, build, work, connect, bend, birth, wreck and sit. CCC took steps in eight of the most populated countries in the world in eight months in order to better understand the social and cultural differences analyzed through chairs. Matteo Guarnaccia, a Sicilian designer, went around the world to portray each local culture in one chair, collaborating with native design studios and their artisans. Sitting is a common necessity, but do we approach it in the same way? Is the way of gathering changing according to a globalized attitude to consuming design? Can the act of sitting be transcendent, active and powerful? Or is the use of a chair a random, mundane behavior? Is the chair a possible physical result of colonization? How do chairs impact humans on a global scale? Does asking these questions matter?

Postnatural
Independent Program (PIP)

2024

Visual identity
Animations by Sofia Crespo.
Program held by the Institute for Postnatural Studies.

The third edition of the Postnatural Independent Program (PIP) will explore the new implications of postnature as a framework for contemporary creation. In the form of an experimental educational platform, we will speculate and question not only contemporary ecologies but also new academic approaches and radical notions of learning together. We will explore the new implications of postnature as a framework for contemporary creation. Delving into some of the most urgent issues linked to the current ecological crisis and the necessary redefinition of human activity on the planet and its relation to other beings, this program aims to provide tools for the creation of artistic proposals that have real consequences for the world. We are honoured to think together with: Silvia Federici, Astrida Neimanis, Jussi Parikka, Laura Tripaldi, Helen Hester, Báyò, Akómoláfé, Institute of Queer Ecology, Coco Fusco, Barbara Santos, Luciana Parisi.

Postnatural Gardening

2024

Exhibition design
for MUSE - Museo delle scienze of Trento.
Together with the Institute for Postnatural Studies.

The exhibition invites to shift the anthropocentricperspective into botany to embrace inclusive horizontal visions towards more-than-human beings, creating alliances based on empathy and coexistence. Raising ecological questions and practices entails abandoning linear and objective narratives to create environmental, ecosystemic, and holistic critical research from various angles and disciplines. This approach to gardening aims new spaces for interspecies care by facilitating collaboration, critical thinking, and mutual questioning between disciplines and institutions through shared experiences of listening and gardening together.

Plastics of the Mediterranean

2020

Posters
594×841 mm
Offset print
Available on cthulhubooks.com
Also cover for exibart magazine N5 for ARCO Madrid.

‘Plastics of the Mediterranean’ is a speculative and research project developed by Matteo Guarnaccia and Teresa Fernández-Pello for the Institute for Postnatural Studies. It is constituted as a fictitious collection and classification of different plastiglomerates that would exist between the waters and shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Derived from images of waste and plastic components that are digitally disfigured and coalesced, they represent an existing reality in contemporary seas and oceans. Together, they create the vision of a world in which human polluting actions merge and confuse with the “natural” world of previous marine biology in order to question and speculate on the limits of the relationship between human and nature. Designed together with Teresa Fernandez Pello.

La condición postnatural

2024

Editorial design
170x240mm
290 pages
Available on cthulhubooks.com
By the Institute for Postnatural Studies.

What is postnature? What is the relationship between contemporary ecology and artistic practices? How can we understand levels of agency regarding the socio-climatic crisis and how can we seek other narratives for a desirable future? How can we watch over, feel, empathize, and restructure our affection and sensitivity towards the more-than-human? The postnatural condition delves into the complexities of the current moment.

A book for disappearance

2024

Editorial design
180x250mm
167 pages
Available on cthulhubooks.com
By the Institute for Postnatural Studies.

A book for disappearance explores themes of extinction and ecology through the lens of contemporary technology and using AI and image-generation platforms as collective tools. It grapples with the contradictions of living in this world full of worlds and full of crises, while revindicating processes of nomadic becoming, transcending fixed identities, and collective emergence. While disappearance may seem abstract or esoteric, it has tangible implications for both individual and collective action. Texts by Laura Tripaldi, Institute of Queer Ecologies, and Stacy Alaimo provide further food for thought, and invite readers into recondite explorations—of parasitic spaces and ghost bodies through materialist feminisms; of oak archives and the previous lives that forests can narrate to us; of acid oceans and the psychedelic trips they might afford.

2024

Poster
610x910mm

Curriculum vitae

O efeto da escuta

2023

Visual Identity
Art and science festival in Portugal
Commissioned by the Galeria Municipal do Porto.
Curated by the Institute for Postnatural Studies.
Animations by Nabill Parvizi.

How are the sounds of the planet, of all its creatures and territories, changing within the climate crisis? How do animals perceive the noise of human activities, and of our spoken languages? How does a plant sound when it moves, stretching its leaves to find light or moving its roots towards the water? How do we hear solar flares? Or electromagnetic waves? How does the sound of the tectonic plates affect our mood and daily routines? Can you think of sounds that have gone extinct?
O afeto da escuta is an arts and science festival in collaboration with Galeria Municipal do Porto that will take place from Nov. 10th through the 12th, 2023 and resonated from different locations around the city of Porto. With more than 18 international artists including music composers, experimental sound artists, and acoustic researchers, the city’s sonic ecosystem was amplified, reverberated, and entangled through concerts, conversations, sound activations, and performances. The festival became an open platform and playful ecosystem for generating collective critical thinking around sound ecologies and exploring new modes of empathy for our relationship with the environment.

CCC at the National Gallery of Modern Art of Mumbay

2019

Poster
610x910mm

Posters for the presentation of the Cross Cultural Chairs Indian chair at the National Gallery of Modern Art of Mumbai, India, presenting the collaboration with Sameep Padora and Ajay Shah. The poster focuses on the reflection on the “lota” of the “Indian report” written by the Eames couple for President Nehru in 1958.

Abundant Futures

2023

Editorial design
Catalogue for TBA21
200x260mm
336 pages
Edited by Turner

This publication engages with the proposition formulated through the exhibition Abundant Futures, that presents a daring attempt to imagine worldmaking and ecological futures from the condition of abundance and fullness. It places a wealth of artistic visions and propositions from TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary’s collection into conversation, gesturing at the multiplicity of worlds humans and nonhumans cohabit, a world of many worlds.
Centering around the thought-provoking narratives encapsulated in the exhibition, the fully illustrated publication brings together a multitude of voices and artistic practices, interventions, poetry, newly commissioned texts, and a rich selection of exhibition and performance photography. It proposes an evocative discussion of the themes of abundance, scarcity, the conflict between ecology and nature, and authenticity and identity, as well as the vulnerability of the ecological matrix.

A green jade lake

2021

Exhibition design
Commissioned by CentroCentro Madrid. Curated and produced by the Institute for Postnatural Studies.

In a situation of ecological fragility, we need to rethink the relationships and flows that are established between humans, ecosystems, and their environment, and to take into consideration the differences that exist between the natural and the artificial.“A Green Jade Lake”, the first exhibition to be curated by the Institute for Postnatural Studies, was envisaged as an experiential journey that invited the visitor to wander through its different rooms and landscapes to reflect on the idea of nature today.
The exhibition brought together experience, fiction, artistic work, and research to allow us to explore new ways in which we can interact with the planet. Dealing as it did with different subjects, such as coexistence, botany, territorial policies, and the aesthetics associated with the representation of nature, the exhibition was understood as a constellation that created open and transformative universes. This invitation to reflect and ponder on human action in the world endeavored to bring us closer to ecology from different perspectives and to increase our curiosity about the stories that lie hidden behind art and culture.

CASELLI 11–12

2021

Branding design
Commissioned by CASELLI 11–12, an exhibition space in the center of Milan.

CASELLI 11–12 is a gallery specialized in contemporary design that curates cross-disciplinary projects by hosting collaborations with national and international design studios, promoting both emergent and established practices through a program of partnerships and research-based exhibitions. Leading a process of conservative renovation of the building’s exteriors and interiors, the project tackles the specificities of the architectural and urban context of Porta Nuova and Piazzale Principessa Clotilde, establishing a generative relationship between local and global communities to cultivate transversal connections and encourage critical dialogue.

Makers 1 and 2

2022

Exhibition design
Commissioned by CASELLI 11–12, an exhibition space in the center of Milan.

Makers 1 and 2 explored materiality through concrete categories such as metal, wood, glass and ceramic. Adopting direct contact with the elements as a design perspective, the exhibition addresses the problem of form to deal with the truth of matter, the abstractions of technique and the translation of thought into an object.

Making Kin Animal series

2023

Editorial design
130x190mm
113 pages
Available on cthulhubooks.com
By the Institute for Postnatural Studies.

When we practice becoming with another’s experience, we practice empathy. When we embody collectiveness, we understand ourselves as a whole and therefore feel no separation. What would it be like to inhabit a body without limits or definition? Which words and meanings make us feel like “non-animals”? The literary genre of xeno fiction proposes an exercise of ethological research and imagination, placing our body inside another’s perspective. This publication convenes writers and non-writers that have experimented with animal embodiment to create literary works and visual interpretations that explore different ways to experience “otherness.” In this volume of the Making Kin series, we focus on non-human animals and hybrid bodies.

Ortigia Sound System

2021

Art direction and graphic design for “Ritornerai”, 2021 edition of Ortigia Sound System festival in Sicily, Italy.

Visual identity inspired on the textiles of the tents at “a fero o luni”, the city market in Catania. Named “Ritornerai” after Bruno Lauzi’s song, this year's edition celebrates the came back to “reality” after lockdown. An invitation to everyday routine. This material is been in use for promotional purposes. The collaboration with the festival is interrupted for economical and legal reason.

List of animal displaying homosexual behaviours

2022

Posters
500×700 mm
Offset print
Available on cthulhubooks.com

On Thursday October 12, 2006, the Museum of Natural History at the University of Oslo opened the first exhibition dedicated to gay animals, curated by Geir Soeli. Today, we know that homosexuality is a common and widespread phenomenon in the animal world. Not only short-term sexual intercourse, but also long-term relations; associations that can even last a lifetime. The exhibit featured a small selection of the nearly 1,500 species in which homosexuality has been observed. This fascinating story of the secret life of animals was told through models, photos, texts and specimens.

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