A site-specific exhibition where sculpture, weaving and natural materials intertwine, tracing new connections between landscape, craftsmanship and collective memory.
Just a few weeks before the opening of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, where Chiara Camoni represents Italy with the project Con te con tutto, curated by Cecilia Canziani and supported by ZEGNA as Main Sponsor, the exhibition emerges from a relationship cultivated over time, in which the landscape of Oasi Zegna, the memory of manufacturing, and the artist’s research appear to belong to the same sensitive geography.
Conceived in close dialogue with the landscape of the Oasi, Luccicanza. Di fiori e di filo, di pietra e di terra, di pelle e di radice stems from a profound affinity between the artist’s practice and the cultural vision promoted by Fondazione Zegna and ZEGNART, the framework that brings together ZEGNA’s artistic initiatives. A vision in which art, nature, craftsmanship and landscape do not appear as separate realms, but as parts of a shared cultural and material fabric, capable of evolving over time through relationships, processes and layers of meaning.
On view at Casa Zegna until 22 November 2026, the exhibition curated by Ilaria Bonacossa unfolds as a habitable landscape, an environment in which sculpture, weaving, ceramics and natural matter intertwine in a network of correspondences between the human body, the memory of places and forms of living existence. The project is complemented by the reinstallation of Untitled, Stabkarte (2014) in the Chapel of San Rocco in Trivero.
Within the artist’s practice, matter is never a neutral support, but a living, mutable presence, capable of holding memory and metamorphosis. Earths, minerals and plant fibres sourced from the Oasi Zegna territory, together with yarns from Lanificio Zegna, enter the works as active elements, generating forms that seem to emerge gradually from the landscape itself. The title of the exhibition, Luccicanza, evokes precisely this intermittent quality of matter: a fragile, almost organic glimmer that moves across surfaces, colours and textures, like a spark appearing at the point of encounter between different elements.
In the artist’s practice, the creative gesture coincides with a process of listening and proximity. The work takes shape through slow processes, sedimentations and gradual transformations, in which artistic making retains something of the artisanal dimension of the workshop and of knowledge passed down through generations.
“I do not wake up with unprecedented ideas: it is the work I have just completed the day before that sets in motion what I begin to develop the day after.” – Chiara Camoni
The works presented throughout the spaces of Casa Zegna enter into dialogue with the architecture of the winter garden designed by Pietro Porcinai, now repurposed as an exhibition space. Its glass walls allow the surrounding landscape to permeate the interior and become an integral part of the display: Casa Zegna thus becomes the ideal setting for Chiara Camoni’s practice, which is deeply invested in exploring the intersections between nature and culture.
The installation is composed of a variety of elements — vessels, figures, carpets, textile surfaces and architectural sculptures — that transform the exhibition space into a habitable environment, both welcoming and uncanny at once, inviting visitors to become active participants in the experience. As Chiara Camoni explains: “The works ask the viewer to be present with their body and to establish a relationship with that other body, which is the sculpture. Something happens in that encounter, but it is not an intellectual relationship.” This relational dimension resonates with the very philosophy of Fondazione Zegna, which has long fostered an ongoing dialogue between culture, territory and community.
The vessels, figures, carpets and textile surfaces are created using materials sourced directly from the Oasi Zegna territory: earths, minerals, plant fibres and yarns. In many cases, colour is not applied by the artist but emerges from the intrinsic properties of the material itself, which, when subjected to high temperatures, vitrifies, becoming a true physical transposition of the landscape.
The artist’s entire practice is guided by a desire for discovery: materials are not neutral tools, but active interlocutors, capable of guiding and transforming the creative process. Camoni is interested in the generative dimension of the earth, while remaining distant from any idealised or romantic vision of nature.
Beyond the spaces of the Oasi, the exhibition extends into the Chapel of San Rocco in Trivero with Untitled, Stabkarte, a work composed of a series of threads suspended on the wall, each formed by hundreds of small hand-modelled shapes in different earth tones. Created in 2014 on commission from ZegnArt, the work marks one of the earliest encounters between the artist and the landscape of Oasi Zegna, anticipating themes that have since become central to her practice: the metamorphosis of matter, the processual nature of making, and the relationship between gesture, memory and landscape.
Chiara Camoni’s exhibition for Fondazione Zegna unfolds as a secret garden to be traversed slowly, a space where the landscape enters the artwork and the artwork, in turn, seems to give voice back to matter. In Luccicanza, every element — a thread, a stone, a leaf, a figure — participates in the same network of relationships, making visible that fragile and intermittent spark that runs through all things and which the artist calls, precisely, luccicanza.
The exhibition is now on view at Casa Zegna through November 22.
Credits: Exhibition view, Luccicanza. Di fiori e di filo, di pietra e di terra, di pelle e di radice at Casa Zegna.
Curated by Ilaria Bonacossa
Photo by Camilla Maria Santini
CHIARA CAMONI
Chiara Camoni (1974, Piacenza) lives and works in a small village nestled in the Apuan Alps. She is the artist representing Italy at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2026 with the project Con te con tutto, curated by Cecilia Canziani. Her practice encompasses drawing, botanical printing, video, and above all sculpture, with a particular focus on ceramics. Her works are often the result of collaborations with informal and spontaneous groups, as well as more institutional workshops and seminars. For several years, Il Centro di Sperimentazione has supported the artist in the development of projects characterised by a shared authorship, further expanding the formats and languages she employs in her practice.
FONDAZIONE ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA | PROMUOVERE UN FUTURO MIGLIORE
Fondazione Ermenegildo Zegna’s mission is to help create a better future for the next generations. Inspired by the ethic of giving back to the community that guided its founder from as early as 1910, the third generation of the Zegna family established the Foundation in 2000 to carry forward the philanthropic legacy it had inherited. Following the founder’s vision and the path he charted, quality and dedication exist in harmony with the protection of the natural environment, social well-being, and cultural development.
CASA ZEGNA | DIVULGARE VALORI
Since 2007, Casa Zegna has been an integral part of Fondazione Ermenegildo Zegna, preserving and promoting the heritage and values of the Zegna Group, whose roots lie in the vision of its Founder. Casa Zegna’s multifunctional space encompasses archives dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of more than 110 years of style and responsible entrepreneurship, textile sample collections, and exhibition spaces devoted to projects commissioned from contemporary artists. Casa Zegna represents the roots of Zegna, a place where visitors can retrace the path envisioned by the Founder towards the future.
