Augusto Mola's hyperrealist ceramic sculptures, Mabi Sanna's faceless women, between memories and projections, Luciano Melis's material as an interior landscape, Roberto Ziranu's reflections of light on unfurled sails and forged iron wings, and metal as a contemporary narrative in Bam Design's work. Laura Podda's wedding dresses, a triumph of embroidery, handcrafted tulle, brocade, silk, and coarse wool, and the exquisite weavings of the Fanunza sisters, Flaviana, Simona, and Sandra, are all interwoven with seven different visions, genres, styles, and languages to create wonder and beauty, but also awareness and food for thought on current affairs. From ateliers, workshops, and forges in cities and towns emerge paintings, sculptures, engravings, ceramics, and artistic handicrafts born from the modern revival of ancient arts. Seven fascinating experiences encompassing art, craftsmanship, and design, all sharing a common thread: Sardinia, a custodian of knowledge, culture, myths, and a history of identity to be told through new creative expressions and the tools of the present.
ITS SAILS FULLY UNFOLDED TO THE WIND
Roberto Ziranu
Ziranu is an unmistakable trademark of Sardinian artistic craftsmanship around the world. From his forge on Via Limbara in Nuoro, the metallic sounds of the hammer on the anvil resonate, as if marking the stages of forging, burnishing, and the one-of-a-kind flaming. Roberto Ziranu's works take the form of butterflies, exquisite bodices, a tribute to women. His art continues to make its way through the embossed portraits of Grazia Deledda, Eleonora d'Arborea, and Gigi Riva, whale tails rising from the depths, sails and wings blown by the wind toward Singapore, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Guadalupe. He dedicated three of them to the children of Gaza, to color their dreams with shades of gold, copper, and cobalt blue. Roberto Ziranu, the fifth generation of a family of blacksmiths from Orani, his hometown, has inherited an ancient art. His apprenticeship with his father Silverio, in the workshop he frequented since childhood, was fruitful in the dialogue between the archaic and the contemporary, collective memory and personal exploration. "I was looking for color in this humble, rough material; from experimentation, reflections of light emerged." Like those that illuminate a corner of the Basilica of Assisi, where a swallow, donated by the artist to Saint Francis, symbolizes the desire to fly, beyond all boundaries, to find wonder and the purest meaning of art.
MEMORIES AND FUTURE PROJECTIONS, Mabi Sanna
Oil paintings, fiber art installations. Chairs, traditional Sardinian dresses, and nocturnal processions in Mabi Sanna's vision are everyday elements that become universal symbols. An evanescent feminine universe is revealed in the works of this multifaceted Cagliari-born artist. Her textile design installations are created by breathing new life into chairs destined for the scrap heap. The backrest, adorned with a woven corset, represents "faceless women," metaphors of the female body.
The canvases depict 'Women Carried by the Wind', "that strong mistral wind," explains Mabi Sanna, "a symbol of the change to which Sardinian women, with tenacity and flexibility, manage to adapt time after time." The common thread is the union between ancient and contemporary, the intertwining of personal and collective memory. "My women," emphasizes the self-taught artist, a lawyer by profession, "are not portraits, but archetypes: mothers, daughters, sisters, guardians of memory. They are figures that represent the female identity in its mystery and strength, but also the depersonalization that pervades our era." Mabi Sanna's works speak of dignity, memory, and rebirth.
The Contemporary Profile in Augusto Mola's Ceramics
Sardinian ceramic classics are revived, given a contemporary twist, in the works of Cagliari native Augusto Mola. He is the third generation of master clay makers, a legacy that began a century ago with his grandfather, the celebrated Alessandro, in the 30s and continued with his father, Stelio. Augusto Mola learned skills and techniques in his workshop as a child. The refined "heads with Desulo bonnets," inspired by the complexion of porcelain faces that Mola senior created around the 30s, are just one of the inspirations that have informed his work and the "Le Sospese" series, a tribute to the female figures of Desulo, Ittiri, Atzara, Ollolai, Orgosolo, Seui, and Cagliari.
They have sinuous, essential, stylized lines, almost freed from ancestral burdens and burdens. The Sardinian identity is merely evoked to make room for the modern taste of a new era, maintaining sacredness and purity intact. The artistic microcosm of Mola junior, ceramist, modeler, draftsman, and portraitist, is a triumph of busts, full-length figures, and female profiles where the artistic trait is recognizable in its form, its poetics, and its futuristic vision. Hyperrealistic sculptures suspended in space and time.
BAM: designers and craftsmen
Metals are the materials used in the early days of BAM, an acronym for Bottega Artigiana Metalli. It was founded in Nuoro in 2008 by Tonino Bruno, a third-generation blacksmith, along with his sons Vittorio and Andrea. This family business has long spoken a contemporary language, bridging the culture of craftsmanship with design and art. Their objects and furnishings are also crafted with wood, cork, ceramic, fabrics, leather goods, and glass. "Works created by designers who get their hands dirty and by artisans who make their hands think." BAM's work unfolds between the workshop and the design studio, where making becomes an integral part of the creative process. Design, material research, and craftsmanship coexist within their work. Sideboards, tables, mirrors, containers, and furnishings are the fruit of ancient wisdom, reinterpreted with an eye to the present and the future. The Sardinian chest, the signs of material culture, the carved motifs and the strength of local materials become new forms, designed to inhabit contemporary spaces, maintaining the connection and respect for roots.
Laura Podda's Brides
BETWEEN ANCIENT EMBROIDERIES AND MODERNITY
In her atelier, she creates wedding and formal dresses featuring embroidery, handcrafted tulle, brocade, silk, orbace, precious details, and references to traditional Sardinian costumes. Yet with an elegant and contemporary touch. One of her most iconic gowns, a refined white dress decorated with roses and lilies of the valley from Sarrabus, has crossed the ocean to be admired in New York. Her haute couture creations speak of refined and timeless feminine craftsmanship, unique, custom-made pieces, the fruit of a personal vision yet closely tied to Sardinia, research, experimentation, a connection to her roots, and a global outlook. There is a thread of continuity between her craftsmanship and that of Francesca Sanna Sulis, a pioneer of European female entrepreneurship and a historic figure from Muravera who, in the 18th century, brought Sardinian silk to the courts of Europe, helping to spread the prestige of the island's manufacturing far beyond its borders. Laura Podda's clothes are on display in her new atelier and also inside the MIF – Museum of Female Entrepreneurship in the historic center of Muravera.
sartoriasorellepodda.it
Luciano Melis's MATERIAL MICROCOSMS
Luciano Melis's artistic signature, through paintings, sculptures, and ceramics, lives in his material microcosms. Engravings inhabit wooden or canvas surfaces, graphic monoliths in chiaroscuro and color, intertwined with geometric patterns and freehand drawings. Fragments of earth, stone, steel, pieces of a puzzle waiting to be assembled, give life to physical and interior landscapes. The Pula-born artist designs textures dense with symbolism that evoke places and cultures. Pieces of the world are presented in random order, leaving everyone free to arrange them. Processing scraps and recycled materials are the ingredients of his works. In "Passanti," Melis has transformed a blank space into a sort of three-dimensional canvas, populated by the wooden fragments of a boat, where the eyes of disoriented and tossed passersby try to capture spaces of movement and flashes of light. There is a dialogue between urban space and his works, where chromatic wooden blades stand out against a pictorial background to form a skyline. For Melis, every scrap is life, every fragment is form, every surface carries a trace, every passage leaves a mark.
Corona Textile Laboratory of Muravera
REFINED CREATIONS FROM ANCIENT AND MODERN LOOM
Three sisters united by a passion for weaving. Flaviana, Simona, and Sandra Fanunza run the textile workshop.
Corona di Muravera, on the southeastern coast of Sardinia. A family business where the artisan approach draws on ancient and precious knowledge reinterpreted with skill and originality. The artisan studio was opened in 1976 by their mother, Barbarina Corona, alongside her sister Antonia, both skilled and expert weavers. In 2002, the three sisters took over the helm. The studio displays antique juniper looms alongside more modern ones. The three artisans, with their personal touch, combine historical memory with a modern perspective to create finely crafted rugs, bedspreads, curtains, cushions, towels, and tablecloths while maintaining the local textile tradition intact. This has resulted in a series of refined pieces, embellished with typical, delicate designs and nuances of color, crafted while preserving the key techniques and decorative motifs. Passion, attention to detail, high-quality natural yarns—linen, cotton, and sheep's wool—and craftsmanship are the foundation of all their products, which are available for sale both in the workshop and in their showroom, "Il Telaio di Fanunza," on the central Via Roma in Muravera.
