EUGENIA PINNA - A textile designer's research
Spazio Ilisso, Nuoro, IT
20.01. – 14.04.2024

At Spazio Ilisso, 2024 kicks off with a new exhibition proposal: on Saturday, Jan. 20, at 11 a.m., the exhibition dedicated to textile designer EUGENIA PINNA (Born, 1956), a decisive figure in the renewal of Sardinian weaving, will open.

Her work documents the restart of textile research in Sardinia after the powerful impetus given in the 1950s by Eugenio Tavolara, artist, director and designer for ISOLA (Istituto Sardo Organizzazione Lavoro Artigiano), who developed a sign, formal and chromatic alphabet aimed at contemporary living.

The study of traditional Nule weavings (particularly blankets, fressadas), solid technical knowledge and continuous research are the foundation of Eugenia Pinna’s work. Her journey over the years has meant above all the realization that she is no longer just an artisan, as she was in her early days, but a textile designer. At the beginning of her career, in the Sardinia of the 1980s and 1990s, Pinna struggled to assert her choice, operating in an area marked by small, mostly family-owned artisan textile businesses committed solely to reiterating traditional motifs and patterns demanded by much of the tourist market. The inclusion of a designer in textile production – a role that came to an end with the weakening of the regional institute in charge, ISOLA – did not seem to be expected. After years of commitment, relentless experimentation and a constant activity that has seen her participate in events and exhibitions around the world, Eugenia Pinna is now recognized as a textile designer with an international edge.

Continuing along the tour we come to the most recent series of rugs characterized by irregular geometries: the designer here envisions some modifications that accentuate and develop a practice of weavers of the past, marked by the use of hand-spun wool that generates vertical and horizontal wavy lines. From this intuition Frullato, Coloras, Inverno and Chesò are born. Eugenia Pinna reiterates with them the sense of vibration and movement, dynamism felt to be her own and constantly introduced in her design path as well.

The exhibition aims to document how, in the same decades in which the “handmade” was being partly abandoned in favor of textiles made with industrial machinery, the Nulese designer was able to consciously respond to the needs of the style of living and dwelling of these times from the local textile tradition. A craft marked by rarefied production, regulated by a complex manual process, both in the preliminary stages and in execution. Aspects now considered niche, yet strenuously defended by intellectuals and designers, from Enzo Mari up to, precisely, Eugenia Pinna, who operate on the front line, not surrendering to the flattening linked to economic logic in which quantity inevitably crushes quality.

The catalog features contributions from Anty Pansera, a noted design critic and historian who was awarded the Compasso d’Oro alla Carriera by ADI in 2020, and anthropologist Cosimo Zene, former professor emeritus for the study of world religions and philosophies at the University of London.

10 a.m.-1 p.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday afternoon through Sunday
(closed on Monday and Tuesday mornings)
Info: spazioilisso@spazioilisso.it

More information: https://spazioilisso.it/index.php/editorials/179-eugenia-pinna-la-ricerca-di-una-textile-designer-2