Stories

In 2023, I was living in Prague often wandering the antique markets.

And there, among the beautiful things that people no longer wanted, I found them. Bohemian crystal trays, cut glass, the kind that used to sit on sideboards in homes like the one I grew up in. The kind that connect me to my family history, and in particular to my great-great-grandmother, Giulia Trieb, who emigrated from Prague to Friuli in the 19th century.

Giulia was also my second name. The name that was removed when I was adopted into my new family.

The trays became a stage.

On that stage, I placed small antique figurines of animals found in the same markets. Animals whose natural habitats are disappearing. Creatures that are alone, isolated, displaced. Strangers in a world that was not quite made for them.

I know something about that feeling.

The works in the Stories series are created on a vintage tray. Layers of resin - transparent, luminous, constantly shifting with the light - form the environment in which the figurine stands. The tray beneath is both stage and family heirloom. The animal above is both itself and a displaced being giving voice to a loss it cannot name.

The series that began as something deeply personal, soon toorned into something larger about all of us who have navigated between worlds, between identities, between what we were given and what we chose.

And it became, too, a commitment: to give voice to those who cannot speak for themselves. The animals in these works stand for every living thing whose habitat is shrinking while the world looks the other way.

These are small works. But they carry an enormous weight - lightly.