“POLDINA ART LAB”: an art initiative by Zafferano in collaboration with Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa and the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice
Zafferano partners with two prestigious Venetian art institutes and local young emerging artists, to transforms the cordless lamp Poldina by Zafferano into twenty-two works of art.
The uniqueness of the city of Venice, the potential of new generations and the value of the creative gesture: these are the three themes around which the initiative is developed, with the aim to add artistic value to Poldina, Zafferano’s cordless lamp with an archetypal silhouette.
The Poldina Art Lab initiative is a brainchild of entrepreneur Federico de Majo – founder, designer, and CEO at Zafferano – to involve up-and-coming Venetian artists in the customization of Poldina, and transform it into as many unique art pieces, according to each individual style.
The Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa – a prestigious Venetian institution historically committed to the enhancement of the work of beginning artists – and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, one of Italy’s oldest academies, partnered with Federico de Majo in the search for young creatives to engage in this “call for artists”.
Download the initative’s brochure: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/03z6y9g4thgamnc/AADbbvr9DqxMqXOfm3OxiqFPa?dl=0
Federico de Majo explains: “The collaboration with Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa and Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia is of great value to me, since I have a special bond with the lagoon city: I was born here and grew up breathing passion and creativity in the family glassworks in Murano. It was indeed in the field of artistic creation that I found my vocation as a designer, a profession that evolved into that of an entrepreneur in the design sector. My love for the artistic and cosmopolitan spirit of my city has guided my professional path; therefore, I thought of offering the community of artists who study and work in Venice an additional opportunity to express their creativity.”
It is not uncommon for companies to choose the contribution of artists and designers to turn a design object into a collector’s item: but in this occasion, the choice is supported by the desire to create a collaboration opportunity that is consistent with the firm’s principles. Federico de Majo adds: “When I founded the Zafferano company, I had three simple but important principles in mind: experience, understood as the ability to internalize and value one’s origins and continuity with the past; concreteness, that is solidity, planning, and clarity; and finally, curiosity, which is the bold propensity to research, and an inexhaustible creative force. I thought that these concepts, akin to those of a young creative mind, could have been an interesting opportunity to seize. I therefore thank the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation and the Venice Academy of Fine Arts for connecting me with the artists who work with them.”
Prof. Bruno Bernardi, President at Istituzione Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, comments: “Throughout the ages, the lamp has always been culturally charged with strong symbolic meanings: emblem of the ancestral struggle between light and darkness; of the liberty from the oppression of ignorance; of the promise of a new world, as the philosophers of the Enlightenment era claimed. But the lamp also provides the light of seduction and complicity, of the game that enlivens mutual limits, generates penumbra, and spawns the interpretive power of ambiguity: a more reflective, and potentially richer approach to knowledge.
Zafferano asked a group of young artists to explore the innumerable suggestions of a product with a clear, almost archetypal design. A challenging encounter between artistic creativity and entrepreneurial innovation, two worlds with vast common territories.”
The artists, some of whom have international backgrounds, interpreted the proposed theme using a wide variety of techniques and producing very different works, further demonstrating the versatility of the product. These works will be presented in a special installation in the Zafferano booth at the Euroluce fair, which will take place during the Salone del Mobile in Milan, April 18-23 (hall 13, booth 101). The three customizations that best meet artistic criteria will be awarded a cash prize; one of the projects may be chosen to be produced in a limited edition.
Beyond its cultural value, this initiative reflects Zafferano’s intention to confirm Poldina, probably the world’s best-selling cordless lamp, as a design icon to be increasingly recognized as “the original.”
To involve a wider audience in the Poldina Art Lab project, Zafferano has created a document, which lets everyone personalize their Poldina to make it unique and inimitable. Everything is allowed, the only rules are:
– give free rein to creativity;
– post the artwork on Instagram by tagging the profile @zafferanoitaliaofficial, #poldinaartlab, #mypoldina
Notes
Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa – The Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation is an Institution of the City of Venice that has been supporting contemporary art and the training of young artists for more than 120 years by putting up 15 equipped and free studios in Venice each year, organizing an end-of-stay exhibition, a Young Artists Collective, and numerous other cultural initiatives.
Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia – The Venice Academy of Fine Arts is a state art academy belonging to the university sector of higher education in art and music. Among the specialized courses in the two-year specialized offerings, the DASL School of Graphics – address in Editions and Illustration for the Book and Art Graphics, led by Prof. Giovanni Turria, preserves the ancient tradition of Venetian art graphics and typography.
Ferdinando Andreozzi - Poldina Riverbero
"My idea came from the observation of the light reflected on water in the Venice lagoon, whose glare creates an alternating rhythm of truth. I then analyzed how I could reproduce that glimmer that is always present in Venetian canals. The light of the lamp filters through the cotton threads in different degree of intensity. Additionally, thanks to the displacement of air, the brightness is subjected to random variations. This allows a controlled vibration of the threads, which, like the strings of a harp, perform a luminous melody."
Cecilia Artioli - Poldina Permea
"The idea came from the ability of light to create a comfortable and serene environment. I made origami by folding papers impressed (cyanotype technique) with poems and happy thoughts. Natural light prints the poems on the paper, and through the Poldina's light suffusion, the words will spread in the environment creating a luminous energy."
Eros Beggiora - Punto di Bianco Flesso
"The interwoven texture of chiaroscuro wraps the form with delicate scratches. A few transpiring points outline silhouettes entangled in reticulated shadow."
Flavia Bjedi - Notturna
"All night I slept with you by the sea on the island. Between pleasure and sleep, between fire and water."
Leonardo Brinafico - Dinotte
"At night, glimpses of lights coming from homes and clubs, illuminate the city's skyline. Each glowing windows has something to tell, suggests to the mind a multitude of stories. Light becomes a witness to a mosaic of experiences and emotions, and the lamp becomes its keeper."
Shengyi Chao - Little Angel
"The Poldina (…) gives a feeling of extreme tenderness, sweetness and warmth. The atmosphere is completely full of happiness. in this sense, it looks just like an angel. The concept of "little angel" with two wings is also inspired by the root of Venetian culture, the winged lion, the most iconic symbol of Venetians. Combining the artistic style of the artist, and the design principle of Zafferano, which aims to decorate and personalize environments, the "angioletto" (little angel) was born: it is not a matter of repainting the cover with other colors or shapes, but keeping the original design and its positive effect. The artist wants the "angioletto" to share the affection it provides to those who use it."
Carlotta De Mori - Cavallo Onirico
"In the dream space, somewhere between dream and reality, monsters hide. We do not know what they want or where they come from. In this darkness of fear, spirits present themselves to us. The horse brings light, gives birth to spring, drives away the monsters. Not even open our eyes the night brightens, the serene returns, the dream continues. This decoration is meant to be a protection for anyone who needs a light to brighten their nightmares."
Giulia Facchin - Intreccio di luce
"I decided to create a weave with a material that potentially represents constriction, closure, and conflict. Wrapping a light source with iron is a powerful symbolic gesture that can represent the suffocation of hope in a world of disillusionment. But if used by changing the point of view, it can become a decorative motif, a joyful play of light and shadow aimed at the exchange between solids and voids, at the construction of new and curious spaces. The contrast of rigid and cold material is fulfilled in the illusion that the pattern creates, wrapping itself like lace."
Irene Faranda - Abbraccio, una luce che scalda il cuore
"It is acts of love and kindness that brighten our lives. A project dedicated to all kinds of love, to a simple gesture of affection. A hug, nothing simpler, nothing more indispensable."
Mattia Fioriti - Verdi ore del rame
"The project takes inspiration from the design of Italian flora. In the graphics, the leaf traits of some typical trees of our landscape (poplars, beeches, chestnut trees and olive trees) are taken up, depicted to remind us of the importance of preserving the biodiversity of our places. The idea is also meant to be evocative of an experience that leads to remembrance. Thanks to the soft light and a trunk made of many copper wires (built around the stem of the lamp) a play of amber reflections is created that, together with the graphics of the leaves, recall the visual flavor of a late afternoon in the Italian countryside."
Virginia Follo - Poldina Copernico
"The goal is the broad customizability and interpretability of the Poldina. The heart of the project is the possibility of putting on the bell of the Poldina decorated in a patterned design an acetate cap with the same pattern in a different color, rotatable in such a way as to vary the design with the effect of overlapping. The acetate cap can have different colors so as to fit harmoniously with the environment in which it is placed. Here the canopy as an alternative to dark green is presented in magenta."
Noemi Galatà - Green and Grey
"Inspired by the eco-brutalist aesthetic, the Green and Grey design for this Poldina seeks to reconcile two materials that are as different as they are united, silently present in the everyday life of every individual, concrete and moss. Ideally this design takes on a dual role within the environment, a functional, durable and versatile lamp that thanks to moss gets a life of its own, emphasizing the value of integrating natural elements into the urban reality in an unexpected and dynamic way, encouraging an eco-sustainable approach to life and in constant dialogue with nature."
Angelica Lattarulo - Immersion
"Walking near the canals of the Venetian lagoon, one can admire the effects of stone and metal corrosion created by brackish water. It was these small, very often overlooked details that were the starting point for the creation of this fluid color that characterizes Immersion Poldina."
Elisabetta Malloci - Per The - Citazioni di forme semplicemente eterne
"Make every moment part of you, Create with your surroundings, Seize the beautiful while protecting yourself from the dark, Seek the light and don't let it escape. The natural need to connect with one's surroundings and modify them to make them an extension of one's life, results in this project (...). The poppies (...) open the eye to the dreamlike experience that connects the intangible sphere of light to the earthly, concrete life with its wide rings of rope and iron. The senses are stirred by the scent that expands from the burlap pocket and the contrast of cold materials with warm, natural ones. The moment Per The wants to give is a moment of relaxation in total communion with the objects of one's home and life."
Alina Veronica Petre - Danza Cosmica
"For a week I abandoned my sketchbook and used the Poldina lamp as a creative medium. The result I got is for me a symbol of metamorphosis, of the constant transformation of the universe around us. The choice of using paper to cover the lamp allowed me to create layers just like the various stages of life. I wanted to represent the idea that everything that exists is in constant evolution, like an endless cosmic dance. In this way, the lamp becomes a kind of cosmic beacon, guiding us through the flow of life, in a continuous becoming that surprises and enchants us."
Carolina Savio - Groviglio
"My Poldina decoration stems from my work in the field of linocut related to the automatic drawing practiced by the Surrealists. My drawings are traced directly on a matrix and then engraved. The result after printing is an agglomeration of whites and blacks, a tangle of continuous lines that meet and separate. For this project I deconstructed one of my prints, cut it into small pieces and then reassembled it in random order. This created new encounters of lines and new balances of black and white, reconstructed in an irregular paper surface."
Clara Tacinelli - Under water
''If I had a world as I like it, there everything would be absurd: nothing would be as it is since everything would be as it is not, and vice versa! What is would not be and what is not would be!" says Alice of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Letting myself be inspired by this beautiful phrase, in my drawings everything is always possible and sometimes everything is random. With the pen I draw lines, perhaps boundaries, trying to bring to life a world of my own, inhabited by "not real" characters, with eyes that look even where the human eye does not reach (...) Usually the rhythm of the work follows that of a song, of music, but it may also just be necessary to begin, to draw that primordial line that will then give way to the whole, mixed sometimes with color."
Beatrice Testa - L’isola che non c’è
"Neverland" is a utopian place, metaphorically symbolizing the search for happiness and harmony. It was intended to represent this concept graphically through a set of imaginary islands, with the goal of stimulating the viewer's mind to travel with the imagination or take refuge from those moments that may be difficult to face. The color blue is often used to denote the infinite and the spiritual; it also conveys a sense of tranquility."
Isabella Tiveron - Be P
"I wanted to create an object that can give additional personality to Poldina, "dress" her up even more and is fun to build. I was inspired by a minimalist style by designing an enrichment that nonetheless does not affect the nature of Poldina. It was born as a kit of an object designed as a body that sits on the dome and is easily removable. The modules also offer the possibility to have maximum creativity in the production of this item through shapes, colors and materials."
Giada Tonello - Waiting for you
"A tissue paper protected by a layer of vinyl glue shows graphite and lapis swan designs and is twisted around the lamp canopy. On this first structure rests a cloud of synthetic organza shaped with a heat source and pinched by small seams. The idea of nostalgia and lack is given the form of a cloud of blue and gray swans interrogating the dry city soil in search of their beloved lake. The longing expressed by their anxious gazes is so strong that they expand the dream of a rain cloud into the air. The chosen Baudelairian-inspired visual theme ties in with the personal experience of modern sleep often conciliated by digital noise and electric lights. A sleep that remains hungry, waiting for those typical noises of home, such as the rush of rain on the grass of city suburbs."
JingYun Wang - Once in a lifetime
"When the boundary of time and the world are parallel. We forget each other in the shadow of the sun. Thus, the night embraced by eternal light. Without the stars shedding tears. The poem is written on the edge of a lampshade, in a circular, non-intersecting form. It is based on the ancient Chinese imagery of separation and distance: the "Three Stars of Orion" and the "Heart of Scorpio II" in the Northern Hemisphere, where we cannot see two stars at once in one night. It suggests the brief encounters and passages of people on life's journey. Like the morning and evening stars that do not meet in the sky."
Tongji Zhou - Migliaia di chilometri di montagne e fiumi
"Thousands of miles of mountains and rivers are one of China's relics. Unlike the traditional stereotypical black-and-white impressions of Chinese painting, this one uses mineral pigments in vibrant, rich colors and presents a classic Chinese style that has a unique charm that shines through to the user in any setting. (A little tip: you can add a layer of Chinese rice paper during production to complete the artwork)."