I am a visual and textile artist working across botanical dyeing, textiles, painting, drawing, ceramics and gardening. My process-driven and material-based practice focuses on plants, fibers and colors as a way of exploring connections with specific living worlds and their embedded knowledge. Colors and textiles are not only carrying fundamental expressive qualities, but are also a medium of relationship, rooted in the surrounding ecosystem. Through slow processes of self-teaching, learning from intimacy, affection and from other-than-humans, I circle around matters of care, ecology and de-growth. I am currently exploring geographical specificities and land-based knowledge connected to areas of Italy and The Netherlands.
Processes of unstable chemistry - botanical dyes from madder, wild madder, indigo, weld, lac, wild fennel, chestnut, oak, onion, chlorophyllin, horsetail, coreopsis, anthemis, poppy, rose, bramble, pomegranate, avocado, maple, willow, iron sulphate, aluminum sulphate, soda ash, vinegar, different kinds of local wool, second-hand cotton fabrics, repurposed wood, glazed ceramics, metal structure, dried roots, garden cuttings. Graduation show “Four Meter High Ceilings”, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, July 2023.
Processes of unstable chemistry - botanical dyes from madder, wild madder, indigo, weld, lac, wild fennel, chestnut, oak, onion, chlorophyllin, horsetail, coreopsis, anthemis, poppy, rose, bramble, pomegranate, avocado, maple, willow, iron sulphate, aluminum sulphate , soda ash, vinegar, different kinds of local wool, second-hand cotton fabrics, repurposed wood, glazed ceramics, metal structure, dried roots, garden cuttings. Graduation show “Four Meter High Ceilings”, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, July 2023. Photo: Michaela Lakova.
HOLOBIONT - 2023, different kinds of wool from Netherlands, Italy and Norway, hand spun and dyed with plants, lichens and mushrooms. Tapestry produced over two residency periods in summer 2023: “Air Green”, Søndre Green, Noresund, NO (supported by Norwegian Textile Artists) and “Dispense”, Terzospazio Zolforosso, Venice, IT.
Abitare l’interferenza - Hetty Laycock and Miriam Del Seppia. Exhibition and public program part of residency program “Dispense” curated by Giulia Mariachiara Galiano, Martino De Vincenti and Alessandra Luisa Cozzi, 2023, Terzospazio (Zolforosso), Venice, IT.
The residency was conceived as a collaboration with artist Hetty Ann Laycock, based in Venice. We aimed to share our methodology of working in connection with the landscape and activating a reflection on humans-other than human interactions rooted in texts such as those of A. Tsing, M. Sheldrake and R. W. Kimmer. Together with the curators, we organized a public walk in Murano and Torcello Islands with marine biologist Irene Guarnieri (CNR, Venice), exploring the marine environment of the Venice Lagoon. As a conclusion of the residency, we realized a collaborative installation, containing works from each of us and gathered materials that are at the core of our practices. The opening event hosted a workshop by "Malomodo" (Francesca Melina, researcher and PhD candidate in Sustainable Development and Climate Change, Ca’ Foscari; Gioele Bertin, researcher and Visual Designer). The workshop aimed at deepening the artists’ practices, by giving theoretical and sensory coordinates to activate a conversation with the audience reflecting on the distinction between human and other-than-humans, and the absence of this border. "Malomodo" provided a physical experience that placed our bodies as centers with which to engage in a dialogue, building ecologies of thought rooted in our senses.
Words contain seeds - a project by Miriam Del Seppia, Angela Grigolato and Valeria Moro, that involved a residency and opening event at Paviljoen aan het Water, Rotterdam (NL) in January 2024. The project stemmed from a collective translation of the essay by Ursula K. Le Guin “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”. Translating collectively is a way of spending time together while also digesting and unfolding the multiple meanings contained in words, finding ways of sharing different understandings and exploring different and common imaginations. During the residency at Paviljoen aan het Water we gave a concrete shape to the translation, shared the text and reflections on our process, and received feedback from the visitors. Picture by Agata Sznurkowska.
To hold (Trace/Time) - cotton dyed and printed with lichens, onion, reseda luteola, hand spun wool threads, spindles. Installation view at Piet Zwart Institute, 2022. Photo: Anna Kieblesz.
Looking into the pond. The pieces that were forgotten or rejected - Leftover botanical prints made during a workshop, cotton, recycled clays. 2022. Approx 110x105 cm. Photos: Anna Kieblesz.
Ongoing compositions - botanical dyes from chestnut, oak, indigo, weld, wild fennel, avocado, iron sulphate, aluminium sulphate, wool, second-hand cotton fabrics, paintings oil and pastels on cotton, unglazed ceramic, vegetal materials. Exhibited at "Still within reach", Fanfare, Amsterdam 2023, a collaboration, exhibition and public program by Miriam Del Seppia, Bronwen Jones and Masaki Komoto. Photo: Diego Diez.Photo: Diego Diez.
Public program “Still within reach” - Processes of bundle-dye during “Still Within Reach”, 2023, Fanfare, Amsterdam.
Terre - 2020, cotton dyed with soil and plants from territories around Pisa and Monte Pisano, natural elements with concave surfaces, raw clay, seeds, approx. 113×130 cm. Exhibited in the show "Morbida" in 2022, at Latte project space, Faenza (IT).
