Erasmus, Peter Behrens School of Architecture and Design, Düsseldorf (DE), 2017–2018.
Bachelor’s, Industrial Design & Advanced Ceramics, ISIA Faenza (IT), Cum laude, 2014–2018.
Designer in residency, Creative Residency Arita (Japan), January–March 2024.
Main lecturer in Natural Materials in Ceramics, The Material Way, January–June 2024.
Fellow Researcher, LINA x TU Wien, Vienna, October 2023–August 2024.
Tutor, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (NL), September 2023–June 2024.
Ceramic production consultant, Bruno Baietto’s In Bones We Dwell, Dordrecht’s Museum (NL), 2023.
Ceramic workshop specialist, Royal Academy of the Arts, The Hague (NL), January–August 2023.
RAW.obj, Pioneers in Ceramics, Prinsenhof Museum Delft (NL), February 2024–ongoing.
Conversing with Matter, Princessehof Museum Leeuwarden (NL), November 2023–ongoing.
In Presence of Your Absence + RAW.obj, Open Studios, Rijkskademie, Amsterdam (NL), 2024.
In Presence of Your Absence, Hong Kong Design Institute, Hong Kong (China), January–May 2024.
In Presence of Your Absence, Milan Design Week, ADI Design Museum, Milan (IT), 2023.
Vestiges, Alcova, Milan Design Week, Fuorisalone, Milan (IT), 2023.
In Presence of Your Absence, Material District, Utrecht (NL), 2023.
Raw.obj, The Future of Art Making, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (NL), 2022.
Ciona Are Doing Well, SVA Bio Art Lab, New York, 2022.
SPAZIO 1/2: Worskshop “Clay Dialogues”, Drop City, Fuorisalone, Milano (IT), 2022.
Sea Silt, collaboration with Humade, Ceramics Museum Princessehof, Leeuwarden (NL), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, DAE75!, Fuorisalone, Milano (IT), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Rethinking Plastic, Yksi Expo , Eindhoven (NL), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Design Fest Gent, Design Museum Gent, Gent (BE), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, From the Ground Up, Material Source Studio, Manchester (UK), 2022.
Conversing with Matter, Design Open, Kazerne, Eindhoven (NL), 2021–2022.
Conversing with Matter, Dutch Design Week 2021, DAE Graduation Show, Eindhoven (NL).
Ciona Are Doing Well, Interspecies Futures, by Oscar Salguero, NY Center for Book Arts, 2020.
Award, Young New Talent, Material District, Utrecht (NL), 2023.
Grant, Creative Residency Arita, Japan, Stimuleringsfonds, 2024.
Grant, Building Talent, Stimuleringsfonds, The Netherlands, 2021.
Nominee, Gijs Bakker Design Award, Design Academy Eindhoven, 2021.
Realised in collaboration with sunday morning EKWC, Wetering, and Asbeter Holding.
Graduation project for Design Academy Eindhoven
The relative abundance of clay on earth overshadows its finite nature and the damages caused by its extraction. Starting from the conversation with the clay on the potter’s wheel and along the making process, the material research Conversing with Matter on the one hand explores the economic, social, and technical aspects entangled around the mining and the making. On the other, it proposes an alternative journey to making while minimising the countereffects of the extraction.
The research starts by investigating the reclamation of clay from the local sludge of the river Maas. The employment of river clay has multiple sustainability aims. A gradual harvesting method allows the riverbanks to clean and regenerate, keeps local colours, textures, and properties while promoting a refamiliarisation with regional river bodies. River clay urges to care for what goes dispersed into urban waters as clay absorbs and tracks the chemical contamination encompassing it.
The marbling with a common studio clay, a white stoneware from Germany, allowed for an easier application of the wild clay body, otherwise uneasy to manage. The conversations between and with these two clay bodies on the potter’s wheel materialise in an archive made of pots inspired by Jacoba jugs. Mirroring the nature of the two clays, Jacobas were traded from Germany, the origin of the stoneware, to the Netherlands, where the river clay came from. Due to shipwrecks, many Jacobas still lay down in the river bed. The inspiration from the archaeologic findings was thought as a way to tell the stories of the materials and highlight their geographial origins while crafting a shape to archive the process. Potters say that to start understanding the clay on the potter’s wheel it is needed to throw at least one hundred pots. Hence, one hundred samples of conversations were led.
By collaborating with a local research centre treating asbestos-cement and turning it in safe silica, the second part of the research explores the application of the by-prodcuct of the treatment of asbestos as a filler in the clay. This uncommon grog, thought of as such for the first time, strenghens the body of the clay while reducing the quantity of material needed. It in fact can substitute the 50% of the amount of clay needed. The material exploration was materialised in a set of 450 wall tiles, configuring the architectural and insulating possibilities of the composition while in dialogue with the uses of asbestos in the past.